oomkill(8)
π oomkill(8) π
π NAME π
okay so the manual name is oomkill, and it's literally the thing that does Trace oom_kill_process(). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc. β¨ it's giving tracing vibes, periodt π
β¨ SYNOPSIS β¨
oomkill
just type oomkill. that's the whole outfit π«Ά
πΈ DESCRIPTION πΈ
okay bestie, this one traces the kernel out-of-memory killer π₯ and prints basic details, including the system load averages at the moment of the OOM kill. π this gives you more context on what the system was up to right then. was it getting busier, or was it steady? you can tell from the load averages π
this tool is also lowkey great to customize for investigations. for example, you can add other task_struct details at the time of OOM π§
β οΈ only the root user can use this tool, because it uses BPF. not me being bossy, that's just how it is π
π¦ REQUIREMENTS π¦
you'll need CONFIG_BPF and bcc. no cap, that's the whole list π
π EXAMPLES π
Trace OOM kill events:
# oomkill
π FIELDS π
π Triggered by ...
this is the process ID and process name of the task that was running when another task got OOM killed. β¨ the main character who was still vibing when the chaos happened π
π₯ OOM kill of ...
this is the process ID and name of the target process that got OOM killed. π rip to that one
π loadavg
this is the contents of /proc/loadavg π«§ the first three numbers are the 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages. ngl they're an exponentially damped moving sum, and those numbers are constants in the equation π€ then you get the number of running tasks, a slash, and the total number of tasks. the last number is the last PID that got created π¦
π§ OVERHEAD π§
negligible π basically no cost, iconic behavior
π SOURCE π
this is from bcc π
https://github.com/iovisor/bcc
also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file. it has example usage, output, and commentary for this tool, so it's like a little study guide ππ«Ά
π OS π
Linux only, bestie π§
π§ͺ STABILITY π§ͺ
Unstable - in development. β οΈ it's still cooking, so don't be shocked if things change π
π AUTHOR π
Brendan Gregg π the queen who made it
π«Ά SEE ALSO π«Ά
memleak(8) π go check that one next, it's giving sibling energy
okay that's the whole tea ββ¨ this was oomkill(8) from the USER COMMANDS section, dated 2016-02-09. stay iconic, bestie πΈπ π¦
π¦ where this page comes from
- centos-stream 10: bcc-tools 0.36.1-1.el10 Β· Apache-2.0
- centos-stream 9: bcc-tools 0.36.1-1.el9 Β· ASL 2.0
- fedora 43: bcc-tools 0.35.0-2.fc43 Β· Apache-2.0
- fedora 44: bcc-tools 0.35.0-5.fc44 Β· Apache-2.0
- π girlified by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms