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  • "I have a process that uses a lot of memory" How ? (by repeatedly using malloc or friends ? / other ?)
    – MC68020
    Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 8:34
  • 1
    I don't know, I didn't write it and I haven't debugged it. Is it relevant to either of my questions? If so, that would be a great thing to explain in an answer! I wasn't aware that the OOM Killer behaved differently depending on how a process allocates memory.
    – c--
    Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 19:05
  • Yes there are significant differences between some process which image, at launch time, would require a given amount of memory / another process which would at some point of its execution request for the same amount of memory / another processes which would repeatedly and quickly request small chunks which sums would, at some point equate the identical amount of memory. This difference is definitely relevant to your question as worded in the title. Not to the "first question" as you labeled it. I'll try to provide some answer…
    – MC68020
    Commented Dec 5, 2022 at 22:10
  • 1
    Awesome, thank you. Presumably it doesn’t require all the memory at startup since it runs for a while before crashing when swap is added. But I don’t know whether it is lots of small allocations continuously or occasional big ones. Either way, I am surprised that vm.swappiness affects whether or not the OOM Killer is triggered. I look forward to your answer!
    – c--
    Commented Dec 6, 2022 at 8:09
  • I have added some new observations to my question. It seems that perhaps vm.swappiness was a red herring.
    – c--
    Commented Dec 7, 2022 at 21:34