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How the Linux Page Reclaim and OOM Killer Work: LRU Lists, Watermarks, and Why the System Kills Processes

A process that calls malloc for a multi-gigabyte buffer under memory pressure does not always receive the pages. The kernel may already be s...

Sarthak Bystander 27 Oct, 2026

Latest Posts

How the Linux Page Reclaim and OOM Killer Work: LRU Lists, Watermarks, and Why the System Kills Processes

A process that calls malloc for a multi-gigabyte buffer under memory pressure does not always receive the pages. The kernel may already be s...

Sarthak Bystander 27 Oct, 2026

Test Post for Inventory Check

This is a test.

Sarthak Bystander 24 Oct, 2026

How the Linux Network Transmit Path Works: sk_buffs, qdiscs, and Why send() Returns Before the Packet Leaves

A process that calls send() on a TCP socket expects the bytes to leave the machine eventually. It does not expect the call to wait until the...

Sarthak Bystander 24 Oct, 2026

How the Linux Network Transmit Path Works: sk_buffs, qdiscs, and Why send() Returns Before the Packet Leaves

Draft placeholder for the full transmit path article. Full content will be updated.

Sarthak Bystander 24 Oct, 2026

How TLB Shootdowns Work: IPIs, PCIDs, and Why Unmapping a Page Is Not Free

A process that calls munmap on a range it no longer needs expects the virtual addresses to disappear. On a single-core machine that is almo...

Sarthak Bystander 24 Oct, 2026

How the Linux Network Transmit Path Works: sk_buffs, qdiscs, and Why send() Returns Before the Packet Leaves

A process that calls send() on a TCP socket expects the bytes to leave the machine eventually. It does not expect the call to wait until the...

Sarthak Bystander 23 Oct, 2026

How File System Journaling Works: Ext4, Ordered Mode, and Why fsync Is Not Free

A database that calls fsync after a commit expects the bytes it wrote to survive a power cut. A filesystem that just renamed a temporary fil...

Sarthak Bystander 22 Oct, 2026

How the Linux Block Layer Works: bios, Request Queues, and Why I/O Is Batched

A filesystem that wants to write a dirty page does not issue a single system call that waits for the disk. It builds a bio , submits it, and...

Sarthak Bystander 20 Oct, 2026

How NUMA Works: Nodes, Distance, and Why First-Touch Allocation Matters

A process that calls malloc for a multi-gigabyte buffer on a two-socket server does not receive equal-cost memory. The physical frames behin...

Sarthak Bystander 18 Oct, 2026

How the Linux Network Receive Path Works: NAPI Polling, sk_buffs, Softirqs, and Why the Hard IRQ Never Copies the Payload

A NIC that has just finished DMA-ing a frame into a host ring buffer does not copy the payload in its hard interrupt handler. The handler do...

Sarthak Bystander 16 Oct, 2026

How Spectre Works: Speculative Execution, Branch Predictors, and Cache Side Channels

A bounds check that returns early is not a security boundary when the processor has already executed the instructions that follow it. Spectr...

Sarthak Bystander 14 Oct, 2026

How Linux Namespaces and cgroups Work: Isolation, Resource Limits, and Why a Container Is Not a Virtual Machine

A process that calls unshare(CLONE_NEWPID) and then fork does not get a private machine. It gets a private view of process IDs. The child se...

Sarthak Bystander 13 Oct, 2026