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Table of contents
Symptom & Impact
System freezes under load and applications are killed unexpectedly. Logs show Out Of Memory killer activity.
Environment & Reproduction
Observed on low-RAM VMs, browser-heavy desktop sessions, or builds that exceed available memory and swap.
Root Cause Analysis
Working set exceeds RAM and configured swap, causing kernel to terminate processes to recover memory.
Quick Triage
Check current memory pressure with free -h, vmstat 1 5, and swapon –show.
Step-by-Step Diagnosis
Inspect OOM events with journalctl -k -b | grep -i ‘out of memory’. Identify offenders via systemd-cgtop.
Solution – Primary Fix
Add swapfile using fallocate, mkswap, and swapon, then tune swappiness in /etc/sysctl.d/. Enable and size zram if appropriate.
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Solution – Alternative Approaches
Reduce parallel jobs, limit browser tabs, or increase VM RAM allocation for sustained workloads.
Verification & Acceptance Criteria
No new OOM kill entries during peak load tests and interactive responsiveness remains stable.
Rollback Plan
Disable added swap entries in /etc/fstab and remove swapfile if side effects appear.
Prevention & Hardening
Use monitoring for memory saturation and set service memory limits with systemd resource controls.
Related Errors & Cross-Refs
Related entries include ‘Killed process … total-vm’ and desktop lockups under memory contention.
Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
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References & Further Reading
Ubuntu memory tuning docs, systemd resource-control manual, and kernel VM documentation.
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