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> 2. Browsers. The state of browser memory management is atrocious. Just about every time I've run out of memory (other than compiling some complex software wit

> 2. Browsers. The state of browser memory management is atrocious. Just about every time I've run out of memory (other than compiling some complex software with -O3) it's been because my browser is hogging a huge chunk of it > Modern browsers are not good "desktop citizens", if you will. They hog memory to the point where opening anything new will create a pressure stall. I went the ballistic route: most of my browsers run inside local Docker containers, on which I put CPU and RAM quota. It's my machine: I decide how "citizens" behave : )

scaladev 6y ago
If you're using systemd, drop docker and start your browser through something like this: #!/bin/sh systemd-run \ --user \ --scope \ --property=MemoryHigh=4G \ --slice=background \ /usr/bin/firefox "$@" Theoretically this does not prevent Firefox from using more than 4 GBs of memory (you need MemoryMax for that), but practically it does. MemoryHigh=bytes Specify the throttling limit on memory usage of the executed processes in this unit. Memory usage may go above the limit if unavoidable, but the processes are heavily slowed down and memory is taken away aggressively in such cases. This is the main mechanism to control memory usage of a unit. MemoryMax=bytes Specify the absolute limit on memory usage of the executed processes in this unit. If memory usage cannot be contained under the limit, out-of-memory killer is invoked inside the unit. It is recommended to use MemoryHigh= as the main control mechanism and use MemoryMax= as the last line of defense. I use a similar script to prevent my torrent client from pushing more useful data out of the page cache. You can put resource limits on basically anything (see systemd.resource-control(5)).
arp242 6y ago
Docker is pretty overkill for this; you can just create a new cgroup with a maximum memory, CPU, etc.
anthk 6y ago
OpenBSD has login.conf https://man.openbsd.org/login.conf.5 https://man.openbsd.org/login.conf.5
- upofadown 6y ago
  Speaking of which, Firefox behaviour has improved on OpenBSD significantly recently. It used to either crash or act weird when it hit the memory limit in login.conf (which it would eventually do). Now it just works. No idea what changed.
xorcist 6y ago
This is what ulimit is for.

scaladev 6y ago

If you're using systemd, drop docker and start your browser through something like this: #!/bin/sh systemd-run \ --user \ --scope \ --property=MemoryHigh=4G \ --slice=background \ /usr/bin/firefox "$@" Theoretically this does not prevent Firefox from using more than 4 GBs of memory (you need MemoryMax for that), but practically it does. MemoryHigh=bytes Specify the throttling limit on memory usage of the executed processes in this unit. Memory usage may go above the limit if unavoidable, but the processes are heavily slowed down and memory is taken away aggressively in such cases. This is the main mechanism to control memory usage of a unit. MemoryMax=bytes Specify the absolute limit on memory usage of the executed processes in this unit. If memory usage cannot be contained under the limit, out-of-memory killer is invoked inside the unit. It is recommended to use MemoryHigh= as the main control mechanism and use MemoryMax= as the last line of defense. I use a similar script to prevent my torrent client from pushing more useful data out of the page cache. You can put resource limits on basically anything (see systemd.resource-control(5)).

arp242 6y ago

Docker is pretty overkill for this; you can just create a new cgroup with a maximum memory, CPU, etc.

anthk 6y ago

OpenBSD has login.conf https://man.openbsd.org/login.conf.5 https://man.openbsd.org/login.conf.5

upofadown 6y ago
Speaking of which, Firefox behaviour has improved on OpenBSD significantly recently. It used to either crash or act weird when it hit the memory limit in login.conf (which it would eventually do). Now it just works. No idea what changed.

xorcist 6y ago

This is what ulimit is for.