Isn't swap the standard configuration? I did not set up this server, but I don't see why it would not have swap. Nevertheless, this problem occurs. I'll check.

Isn't swap the standard configuration? I did not set up this server, but I don't see why it would not have swap. Nevertheless, this problem occurs. I'll check. I know the solution is to never use more memory than I have RAM, but that's just what happens - and I know there is no way to "solve" the issue and make it magically run. The issue is HOW it is handled... It's weird that other OSs can deal with this, while Linux needs to be restarted. I think the issue is that only a handful of (Matlab) processes eat up all the RAM, so this "OOM" can not really do anything - there's no use killing off other processes. What should probably happen is to kill Matlab or one of its processes, even though it is in use. I'd be fine with that. Give some out of memory error and kill or suspend the process. At least then we know. Instead, the system just locks up completely (because the other threads keep trying to push stuff into memory), but is not actually dead, so we don't even catch the issue. Also, because EVERY process is essentially stalled, you can't even kill Matlab yourself. Or suspend it and dump the data, which would be useful. No, you have to hard reset the machine.