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Date:      Fri, 20 Apr 2018 21:17:41 +0200
From:      Stefan Blachmann <sblachmann@gmail.com>
To:        Yuri <yuri@rawbw.com>
Cc:        Freebsd hackers list <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Runaway processes freeze the system
Message-ID:  <CACc-My2JV2Ahgw8ckTPviueQoy2nVrkoWQEQtEtSRuE3g9vnyA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <e6655853-07e6-4473-31c6-b35f35990ec5@rawbw.com>
References:  <e6655853-07e6-4473-31c6-b35f35990ec5@rawbw.com>

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Ideally rctl(8) should be the solution.
Actions can be defined to refuse to allocate more memory or kill
processes that demand too much memory.

By turning off swap and restricting memory usage one can improve
performance by preventing the swapper making the system sluggish.

However, rctl is only of limited use for desktop users, as Xorg fails
to start if vmemoryuse gets restricted (no matter how big the value).
So rctl(8) appears of practical use only for example for protecting
servers and embedded systems from crashing and damaging filesystems
because of user programs eating up too much memory.

I advise you to experiment with it, as the rctl(8) documentation/man
page seems partly incorrect/misleading, for example regarding per-user
resource limiting.

On 4/20/18, Yuri <yuri@rawbw.com> wrote:
> I am getting this problem again and again: when some process allocates
> too much memory the system to freezes.
>
> My memory size is 24GB, and swap is only 4GB. I know that increasing the
> swap size should reduce the chance of this happening, but it obviously
> can't eliminate the problem.
>
>
> What is the expected behavior of the system in such situation? To me it
> looks like it is wait-and-see, and this causes this problem.
>
> A better strategy would be to maybe wait for some time, but if when the
> problem persists to kill the largest, the most active, or the offending
> process.
>
>
> 11.1 amd64
>
>
> Yuri
>
>
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>



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