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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Auto kill memory leaking processes before swap death loop (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm using linux mint 21.3, and a process (brave aka chrome) sometimes memory leaking, so eats all the RAM, and then linux goes into swap death loop, when everything freezes (sometimes the mouse cursor is moving), and nothing can't be done, i can just see the HDD led blinking, and do a reset. Is there a way to make the system automatically detect swap death loop, and close the biggest ram user process, and so on?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well that's technically correct, but if you're so dependent on disk cache for system performance that you can't live without it then you really need to look at doing an upgrade.

When a box swap deaths, it usually struggles to actually fill swap enough to have the kernel still OOM kill it at any point. Generally the massive performance impact of swapping just slows the app down to the point of being useless, along with the entire rest of the box. Disk cache should not be a concern during these abnormal events.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'll make an appeal to authority (kernel developer working on memory management):

Disabling swap does not prevent disk I/O from becoming a problem under memory contention, it simply shifts the disk I/O thrashing from anonymous pages to file pages. Not only may this be less efficient, as we have a smaller pool of pages to select from for reclaim, but it may also contribute to getting into this high contention state in the first place.

And then he goes on to say what I said, that it can make the OOM killer quicker to react.

https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Interesting, thanks for the link!