rfjakob/earlyoom on Hacker News

…before triggering an OOM kill. I recommend using the earlyoom if you want more aggresive oom kill: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom The README contains a lot of interesting information.

comment by negrel · 2026-09-11 · in Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead

…too big. It has always killed the Python process or terminal program which did something silly. [0] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by 3eb7988a1663 · 2026-08-19 · in Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

For OOM, there's earlyoom [1] and systemd-oomd [2]. They usually work out of the box [1]: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom [2]: https://man.archlinux.org/man/systemd-oomd.8

comment by augusto-moura · 2026-08-18 · in Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

Install oomd or earlyoom. https://github.com/facebookincubator/oomd/ https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by ars · 2026-06-01 · in Re: [PATCH] OOM_pardon, a.k.a. don't kill my xlock (2004)

…bustd is very lightweight & new. earlyoom has been around a long time, and has an --avoid flag. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom?tab=readme-ov-file#prefe... Your concerns are very addressable.

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2026-03-07 · in Modernizing swapping: virtual swap spaces

I can recommend earlyoom ( https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom ). Instead of freezing or crashing your system this tool kills the memory eating process just in time (in this case duckdb). This allows you repeat with smaller chunks of the…

comment by tuhgdetzhh · 2025-10-31 · in Use DuckDB-WASM to query TB of data in browser

…but for their POVs/concepts regarding the same problem: https://github.com/facebookincubator/oomd , https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom , https://github.com/hakavlad/nohang These, to maybe take inspiration from, to adjust dynamically:…

comment by LargoLasskhyfv · 2025-07-21 · in Firefox-patch-bin, librewolf-fix-bin AUR packages contain malware

…Not to sure about using it on chromebooks, but linux got quite a bit more usable because of it. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by moe_sc · 2024-06-13 · in ChromeOS will soon be developed on large portions of the Android stack

…different I/O schedulers, but I haven't tried that yet. [1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/682582/ [2]: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by rozenglass · 2023-11-12 · in Fedora Workstation 39

…settings (vm.overcommit, vm.admin_reserve_kbytes, etc). Or even deploy something like EarlyOOM ( https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom ). Or you might just need more RAM, honestly. Yeah. Exactly. But as the thread says, why aren't those…

comment by jowea · 2023-10-09 · in Linux ate my RAM (2009)

…settings (vm.overcommit, vm.admin_reserve_kbytes, etc). Or even deploy something like EarlyOOM ( https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom ). Or you might just need more RAM, honestly. I have always found Linux to behave far more gracefully than…

comment by outworlder · 2023-10-09 · in Linux ate my RAM (2009)

…supposed to prevent this AFAIK. You can though try some tools like EarlyOOM and see if it helps : https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by SomeoneOnTheWeb · 2022-12-12 · in Linux Desktop Environments System Usage

Use earlyoom: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom .

comment by moxvallix · 2022-10-02 · in Ask HN: What did Linux not do right?

…around with 8GB RAM, upgrading that helped. Installing earlyoom[1] is another workaround. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by kauguste281 · 2022-04-13 · in Playing with DALL-E 2

…although I assume there's some kind of sysfs parameter that I might have tweaked instead. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by 0xcde4c3db · 2021-12-23 · in Linux Ate My RAM

…Back when I didn't have a ridiculous amount of RAM, I used this instead and was happy with it: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom The boot thing you mention always seemed a very odd default to me. It doesn't happen to me any more on my…

comment by thingification · 2021-11-12 · in Microsoft to Block Windows 11 Browser Workarounds

…better tools at your disposal than ballast pages--cgroups and tunable oomkillers like earlyoom ( https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom ). On the other hand, if you are likely to be identified as the culprit, I think the best you can hope for…

comment by zbentley · 2021-08-14 · in Dealing with Out-of-Memory Conditions in Rust

…[1] can at least save me from having a complete freeze. There are packages for most distros. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by z991 · 2021-05-19 · in Improving Firefox stability on Linux

…on servers. It logs to syslog but also can be configured to run a program on kill events. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom , https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/earlyoom , https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=earlyoom (Why…

comment by pflanze · 2020-11-24 · in Guide to OOMKill Alerting in Kubernetes Clusters

…unresponsive state. This can be prevented using earlyoom (which is packaged in most distros): https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom It's probably too difficult to fix the underlying design errors, e.g. fork() duplicating the process's entire…

comment by mrob · 2020-11-16 · in Reasons to prefer Linux over Windows (2014)

…do. I have yet to be patient enough to wait for it, sitting in front of an unresponsive system." https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by mrob · 2020-06-09 · in In defence of swap: common misconceptions

…anything more than a bandaide, but I have found earlyoom to be immensely useful in cases like that. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by throwaway2048 · 2020-05-24 · in Tuxedo Book BA15: AMD-only and Linux-preinstalled laptop

…is also annoying but less so than having to wait minutes until you can use your computer again. [0] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by yosamino · 2019-12-19 · in Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

…Earlyoom is a user space OOM-killer that kicks in before the system starts the mad paging dance. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom Packages are available in Debian Stable (Buster), so they should be available in most child distros by now…

comment by eikenberry · 2019-08-25 · in From Mac to Linux – the setup I've grown to love

…for desktop use is some swap and low swappiness. One could imagine that perhaps something like https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom Might be an easier route to better behavior especially as you can more easily tell it what it ought to kill.…

comment by michaelmrose · 2019-08-09 · in The Linux kernel's inability to gracefully handle low memory pressure

…before, but so far earlyoom has always managed to kill processes early enough to prevent this. [0] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by mrob · 2019-08-08 · in What has to happen with Unix virtual memory when you have no swap space

https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom will help you. It will kill those processes for you.

comment by el_isma · 2019-08-06 · in The Linux kernel's inability to gracefully handle low memory pressure

https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom has worked well for me in the past.

comment by meruru · 2019-08-06 · in The Linux kernel's inability to gracefully handle low memory pressure

…bookincubator/oomd/blob/master/README... and here's a less complicated, but similar proactive daemon: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom/blob/master/README.md

comment by pas · 2019-07-03 · in The Day “/Proc” Died

Tip: I have the exact same setup, and I use earlyoom ( https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom ) to prevent this. Previously, I was frequently unable to break out of the freeze no matter how long I waited, forcing a hard reboot, but with…

comment by bscphil · 2019-01-23 · in New Dell XPS 13 developer edition now available

…keep the system responsive that I'm unaware of? What do you guys do for desktop/laptop systems? 1. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by kevinoid · 2018-07-23 · in Open sourcing oomd, a new approach to handling OOMs

There's a userspace daemon that does that: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom (I am the author)

comment by rfjakob · 2018-01-14 · in In defence of swap: common misconceptions

…lots of RAM, the kernel OOM killer waits far too late, and the system is already unresponsive. [1] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by mnw21cam · 2017-12-18 · in Linux Performance: Why You Should Almost Always Add Swap Space

Use earlyoom: https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom By default, it'll start killing processes when free memory drops below 10%, though you can configure the threshold. I had the same problem for years, and then I started using earlyoom and I…

comment by amyjess · 2017-02-23 · in Do we really need swap on modern systems?

…render the system unresponsive a couple of times Use earlyoom instead of relying on oom-killer. https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom To quote from the description: > The oom-killer generally has a bad reputation among Linux users. This may…

comment by amyjess · 2017-02-23 · in Do we really need swap on modern systems?

…more usable. Systems should designed to fail fast when memory is low instead of slowing down. [0] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by amyjess · 2017-02-23 · in Do we really need swap on modern systems?

…it happened because a powercycle was faster than waiting for the kernel to finish its tantrum. [0] https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom

comment by amyjess · 2016-12-01 · in "Solaris being canned, at least 50% of teams to be RIF'd in short term"