Why ulimit can't limit resident memory successfully and how?

Question

I start a new bash shell, and execute:

ulimit -m 102400
ulimit -a
"
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 20
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 16382
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) 102400
open files                      (-n) 1024
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) unlimited
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited
"

and then ,I execute compiling a huge project. the Linking of it will use large memory, more then 2G. The result, process ld used more then 2G resident memory.

is there any wrong ? how to use ulimit or can I use other programs to limit resident memory?

the target of limit resident memory, is because computer will freeze when one process almost used all memory.

should move to serverfault.com ? – oluies Jul 29 '10 at 08:00 — oluies, Jul 29 '10 at 08:00

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 29 '10 at 09:28

9

According to the man page for setrlimit:

RLIMIT_RSS

Specifies the limit (in pages) of the process's resident set (the number of virtual pages resident in RAM). This limit only has effect in Linux 2.4.x, x < 30, and there only affects calls to madvise(2) specifying MADV_WILLNEED

You probably want to set the virtual memory size instead, via ulimit -v

answered Jul 29 '10 at 09:28

Hasturkun

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NO, I just want to limit the resident memory. If I limit the virtual memory, the ld program will terminate executing, and report the memory is exhausted. – sean Jul 30 '10 at 03:16
For the particular problem you had (large amounts of memory used for linking) it might help to use the gold linker instead of ld. – Robin Green May 22 '11 at 16:06

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

5

You can restrict the resident memory using cgroups. See Resident Set Size (RSS) limit has no effect

edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

Community

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answered Jun 15 '11 at 23:15

Justin L.

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Why ulimit can't limit resident memory successfully and how?

2 Answers2

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