Teaching the OOM killer about control groups
Teaching the OOM killer about control groups
The kernel's out-of-memory (OOM) killer is summoned when the system runs short of free memory and is unable to proceed without killing one or more processes. As might be expected, the policy decisions around which processes should be targeted have engendered controversy for as long as the OOM killer has existed. The 4.19 development cycle is likely to include a new OOM-killer implementation that targets control groups rather than individual processes, but it turns out that there is significant disagreement over how the OOM killer and control groups should interact.
