Linux memory protection and management techniques

Memory overcommitment –

Memory overcommitment allows the operating system to allocate more virtual memory than physically exists on the computer, resulting in an increase in efficiency by maximizing memory usage.

Memory overcommitment involves the ability to utilize available system resources beyond their physical limits. By allowing for more memory than physically exists in the system, memory overcommitment helps in utilizing memory to its fullest extent and maximizing efficiency.

Process control –

Process control is an essential component of Linux memory management that limits memory usage per process, allowing all processes to function properly and efficiently.

Swap space –

Swap space is an important component of Linux memory management that allows for virtual memory to be stored and used when necessary.

Compaction –

Compaction is a technique used to consolidate memory and reduce memory fragmentation.

Demand paging:

Demand paging is an efficient technique that involves swapping memory contents from secondary storage devices (such as hard disks) to primary storage devices (such as RAM). This helps in relieving pressure from RAM and managing resources more effectively.

Memory management framework –

Linux provides an integrated memory management framework that allows memory usage to be tracked and monitored. This allows processes to be allocated the appropriate amount of memory and provides protection from faulty applications and processes.

Memory Compression:

Memory compression is a technique of reducing the size of stored data to save memory space and increase performance. Memory compression also allows a system to work more efficiently when handling a large amount of data as it is compressed and processed at a much faster rate.

Swapping:

Swapping is an essential component of memory management. This process involves swapping out the contents of main memory onto a secondary storage device in order to make more memory space available. Swapping is often used to free up memory in a system or to free up RAM for processes.

Caching;
Caching is an important component of Linux memory management, allowing frequently used data and instructions to be stored and reused.

Types of memory caching techniques;

Page Caching: Page caching involves caching recently used pages of a program in main memory to facilitate quick access of data in future requests. This helps in saving time and memory resources as data stored in main memory are not overwritten by fresh data as often.

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR):

Address Space Layout Randomization is a security technique which involves randomly arranging the address space of processes so that attackers cannot accurately predict the memory location of key data and system code. ASLR helps in making exploitation attempts much more difficult.