OOM Killer
A Linux kernel mechanism that automatically selects and terminates processes with high memory usage when system memory becomes critically low, in order to prevent system failure.
Timeline (last 90 days)
On a server with 1 CPU core and 2GB of memory, upsampling plus tracing a 2048-pixel image peaks at roughly 400 to 600MB of memory, and two parallel tasks will cause the OOM Killer to randomly kill processes.
When the operating system's OOM Killer decides whether to terminate a process, it bases the decision on whether the instantaneous memory peak touches the memory limit, not on average memory usage.
The Linux kernel's OOM Killer selects a process to terminate when both physical memory and swap are exhausted, and the killed process leaves no meaningful error message.
Exit code 137 indicates the process was terminated by SIGKILL (signal 9), derived from the base offset of 128 plus signal number 9, and is typically triggered by the OOM Killer when memory is exhausted.
All Facts (4)
On a server with 1 CPU core and 2GB of memory, upsampling plus tracing a 2048-pixel image peaks at roughly 400 to 600MB of memory, and two parallel tasks will cause the OOM Killer to randomly kill processes.
50%UnverifiedWhen the operating system's OOM Killer decides whether to terminate a process, it bases the decision on whether the instantaneous memory peak touches the memory limit, not on average memory usage.
50%UnverifiedThe Linux kernel's OOM Killer selects a process to terminate when both physical memory and swap are exhausted, and the killed process leaves no meaningful error message.
50%UnverifiedExit code 137 indicates the process was terminated by SIGKILL (signal 9), derived from the base offset of 128 plus signal number 9, and is typically triggered by the OOM Killer when memory is exhausted.
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