I know that the OOM will eventually free up something, see my caveat about "falling down anyway in another X milliseconds." :) I'd consider any machine touched by the OOM to be untrusted until it's completely restarted; I'm not a fan of allowing it to limp along because the OOM killer took out something that seemed unnecessary at the time. Also, it's extra code (mo' code, mo' bugs) to try to deal with what will almost certainly be a fatal error very soon.
But yes, if it can get a log message off, that is a good idea. (Odds are it may trigger the OOM killer at that point, addressing my concern a certain percentage of the time, heh.)
I know that the OOM will eventually free up something, see my caveat about "falling down anyway in another X milliseconds." :) I'd consider any machine touched by the OOM to be untrusted until it's completely restarted; I'm not a fan of allowing it to limp along because the OOM killer took out something that seemed unnecessary at the time. Also, it's extra code (mo' code, mo' bugs) to try to deal with what will almost certainly be a fatal error very soon.
But yes, if it can get a log message off, that is a good idea. (Odds are it may trigger the OOM killer at that point, addressing my concern a certain percentage of the time, heh.)