Robbie Harwood <rharwood(a)redhat.com> writes:
Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com> writes:
>
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/EnableEarlyoom
>
> == Summary ==
> Install earlyoom package, and enable it by default. This will cause
> the kernel oomkiller to trigger sooner, but will not affect which
> process it chooses to kill off. The idea is to recover from out of
> memory situations sooner, rather than the typical complete system hang
> in which the user has no other choice but to force power off.
>
> # enable earlyoom by default on workstation
> enable earlyoom.service
> </pre>
The OOM killer is a kernel function. I have no opinion on this proposal
as it stands, but I would like it to include an explanation of why this
requires a service in userspace to fix.
Another thought. Wouldn't some of the pain here be alleviated by
setting vm.swappiness=0? Currently it seems to be 60, which results in
somewhat aggressive swap use; 1 seems better (minimal swapping without
disabling), while 0 will disable it for general use (while preserving it
for hibernation). This would at least improve the disk thrashing during
OOM situations.
Thanks,
--Robbie