On Mon January 26 2009, Declan Mullen wrote: > 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. > It looks like from that snippet of documentation that setting sshd to -17 in the case where ssh/sshd is the _only_ or _last resort_ means of access to a guest for service or maintenance would be handy. ;) Otherwise the only way to recover control of a wild guest might be to re-boot the host. And your application might make that un-desirable. (Think of force re-starting 100 guests for one "bad guy"). Mike > 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 > > > > > > > > > > > > >