Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – swap is disabled and memory pressure triggers OOM kills

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Processes are killed by OOM despite moderate average workload.

Environment & Reproduction

Often appears on small VMs where swap was removed or never configured.

Root Cause Analysis

No swap capacity exists to absorb memory spikes and reclaim pressure.

Quick Triage

Confirm OOM events and current virtual memory tuning.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Measure memory pressure and identify top consumers.

Solution – Primary Fix

Create swapfile, secure permissions, enable it, and persist in fstab.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Resize RAM or tune application memory limits if swap is not permitted.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Swap is active and OOM kill events stop under normal peaks.

Rollback Plan

Disable and remove swapfile if workload requires swapless policy.

Prevention & Hardening

Set baseline swap for all server classes and alert on memory pressure.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related to Out of memory Kill process and cgroup memory limit events.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 22.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Ubuntu 22.04 swapfile configuration and memory management docs.