1579198 - Use low-memory-monitor to monitor whether Linux systems are under memory pressure

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, enhancement)

Description

[Asif Youssuff]

This project looks interesting to help detect when Linux systems are running out of memory: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/low-memory-monitor/

low-memory-monitor, as its name implies, monitors the amount of free physical memory on the system and will shoot off signals to interested user-space applications, usually session managers, or sandboxing helpers, when that memory runs low, making it possible for applications to shrink their memory footprints before it's too late either to recover a usable system, or avoid taking a performance hit.

Read more: http://www.hadess.net/2019/08/low-memory-monitor-new-project.html

Comment 1

[russianneuromancer]

There Pressure Stall Information right inside kernel: Bug 1532955

Comment 2

[Robert AB]

(In reply to Asif Youssuff from comment #0)

This project looks interesting to help detect when Linux systems are running out of memory: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/low-memory-monitor/

low-memory-monitor, as its name implies, monitors the amount of free physical memory on the system and will shoot off signals to interested user-space applications, usually session managers, or sandboxing helpers, when that memory runs low, making it possible for applications to shrink their memory footprints before it's too late either to recover a usable system, or avoid taking a performance hit.

Read more: http://www.hadess.net/2019/08/low-memory-monitor-new-project.html

There are 2 similar bugs: Bug 1553260 and Bug 675539.
Bug 1553260 is about RAM memory only, whereas Bug 675539 is related to total memory (RAM memory and swap memory).

Comment 3

[Robert AB]

This bug should probably also block other bug (Bug 675539)?

Comment 4

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto] (PTO)]

Yeah, though that bug is now closed; I'll open a new one and move all dependent bugs over.

Comment 5

[Neha Kochar [:neha]]

gcp said Kris is working on this so making Kris the assignee here.

Comment 6

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

We have no plans to use the daemon from the description as we can't rely on it being present and are definitely not working on this. This is pretty much a WONTFIX unless this turns into a standard like systemd.

We'll have to write some of our own code to do similar monitoring inside Firefox itself, but that is tracked in existing bugs.

Comment 7

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

As pointed out in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1532955#c13 this is now in very recent glib, but that doesn't really change anything from our perspective. Maybe in the future, if that glib becomes common enough among the userbase, we can see if the kernel memory pressure events are interesting enough to add it as an optional extra input.