What is the OOM Killer on Linux?

What is the OOM Killer on Linux?

This tutorial is about the OOM killer and how it can impact our Linux operating system.

OOM killer is a shortcut to Out of Memory Killer and is a Linux component designed to prevent RAM exhaustion. The OOM Killer has one task, and that task is to check if there is enough available memory, and if there is not, then select a process to kill to free up some RAM. The situations with exhausted memory occur because the Linux kernel has over-allocated too much for its processes. In the following paragraphs, we will talk about memory over-allocation, the lifecycle of the OOM killer, how it selects which process should be killed, the OOM killer messages, etc.

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