New Low-Memory-Monitor Project Can Help With Linux's RAM/Responsiveness Problem

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Low-Memory-Monitor Project Can Help With Linux's RAM/Responsiveness Problem

Red Hat developer Bastien Nocera has announced Low-Memory-Monitor as a new project he's been tackling to try to help with the Linux desktop use-cases when responsiveness issues due to low RAM / memory pressure problems. Low-Memory-Monitor paired with complementary solutions could help improve the Linux desktop's handling on low-end systems and other desktops/laptops when simply running short on RAM...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Low-Memory-Monitor

[birdie]

I still can't believe my petty post to LKML has stirred such a commotion and multiple discussions. What's really great is that distros have realized it's a serious issue and taking steps to resolve it. Of course, it would be great to have it resolved right in the kernel but it may take a lot more time than a solution based on user space (of which we already have a few and now one more with a contribution from a RH developer).

[Britoid]

I still can't believe my petty post to LKML has stirred such a commotion and multiple discussions. What's really great is that distros have realized it's a serious issue and taking steps to resolve it. Of course, it would be great to have it resolved right in the kernel but it may take a lot more time than a solution based on user space (of which we already have a few and now one more with a contribution from a RH developer).

To be fair, your post just proved why swap is important and why you shouldn't remove it.

[alpha_one_x86]

Firstly correct critical bug should be good: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204315 (my bug)

[birdie]

To be fair, your post just proved why swap is important and why you shouldn't remove it.

If people also stopped repeating the nonsense that a system cannot run without SWAP, I'd be happy.

Again,

• SWAP does not solve this issue.
• In many cases a system can run without SWAP perfectly. I've been running without SWAP for over 15 years now. 100% of my servers (over a hundred high load machines) run without SWAP.
• In many cases SWAP significantly decreases performance and responsiveness.
• In many cases SWAP causes minutes-long stalls.
• SWAP usage decreases your SSD lifespan.
• If your system cannot run without SWAP at all, that means your productivity will improve tenfold if you simply install more RAM (if it's possible).

[Solid State Brain]

To be fair, your post just proved why swap is important and why you shouldn't remove it.

An almost complete system lockup when out of memory occurs also with large amounts of swap enabled (which I needed to enable hibernation in my case), from tests I did when I used OpenSUSE Tumbleweed about a year ago.

Tweaking some kernel parameters would improve this from "somewhat" to "almost entirely" depending on the situation, but still overall the system still didn't feel comfortable with having low free memory compared to Windows. Possibly other parameters would allow to better optimize the kernel for better system interactivity under low memory conditions in desktop environments.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1055669-facebook-developing-oomd-for-out-of-memory-user-space-linux-daemon?p=1055682#post1055682

[spstarr]

no more daemons, the kernel should do this right.

[horizonbrave]

Well, as the ungrateful, dumb and uneducated user I am I just can't figure out why something like that was not implemented before, why we had to wait for Android to give us an hint. I'm not imaging just systems with low memory but also situation where programs for some reason or bug (or even an attack) start finishing up all of your RAM. By the way better late than never and anyway THANKS

[bitman]

To be fair, your post just proved why swap is important and why you shouldn't remove it.

swap swap swap.... it only postpones the problem. i work on machine with 32GB of ram and 16GB swap. while it is very unusual to exceed these numbers during normal usage it happened to me not once due to software bugs that caused program to allocate memory endlessly. what happened then? oh but very same system stall for multiple minutes. no, PC should not lock up for multiple minutes if one process is running wild hogging all the memory. linux should deal with that properly.

[dispat0r]

If people also stopped repeating the nonsense that a system cannot run without SWAP, I'd be happy.

Again,

• SWAP does not solve this issue.
• In many cases a system can run without SWAP perfectly. I've been running without SWAP for over 15 years now. 100% of my servers (over a hundred high load machines) run without SWAP.
• In many cases SWAP significantly decreases performance and responsiveness.
• In many cases SWAP causes minutes-long stalls.
• SWAP usage decreases your SSD lifespan.
• If your system cannot run without SWAP at all, that means your productivity will improve tenfold if you simply install more RAM (if it's possible).

That's all well and good but there are situation were you can't install new ram.
They are also use cases where you need more memory for a short period of time.
But I'm also never using swapfiles or partitions just zram backed swap.