Hi I've just read the kernel documentation for "oom_adj" (filesytems/proc.txt) : 2.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score ------------------------------------------------------ This file can be used to adjust the score used to select which processes should be killed in an out-of-memory situation. Giving it a high score will increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer. Valid values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables oom-killing altogether for this process. So I think I can ignore these errors. All the best, Declan Declan Mullen wrote: > Hi > > When I ssh into my Linux server, the login succeeds but I notice that > I get the following type of entry appended to the auth.log : > > Jan 26 17:10:45 maxv1 sshd[32624]: error writing > /proc/self/oom_adj: Permission denied > > What are the implications of the sshd not being able to write to the > oom_adj ? Ie Is this error significant or should I just ignore it ? > > The sshd's write is failing because the server I'm logging into is a > VServer guest/virtual server, and the VServer virtualisation > technology places restrictions on what can be written to the /proc > filesystem from within the guest. > > The guest server OS is Debian Lenny and the sshd versions is > "1:5.1p1-5". Within the sshd_config Privilege Separation is turned on. > > The host server's kernel is Lenny's "linux-source-2.6.26" (version > "2.6.26-13") with Lenny's vserver patches applied from > "linux-patch-debian-2.6.26" (version "2.6.26-13"). The host's > util-vserver package is version "0.30.216~r2772-6". The host's > "vserver-debiantools" package is version "0.6.3". > > Many thanks, > Declan > > > > >