Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread: How to prevent apps from taking all the resources?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Beans
    9

    Angry How to prevent apps from taking all the resources?

    Hey,

    How do I make it so that a single app could not kill my entire system just by taking all the RAM?

    Often times a rogue app starts to chew up all my RAM and by the time I realize it, my hard drive is swapping faster than a swingers couple and several seconds later even my cursor is not responding.

    I found this page, but it talks about limiting particular apps:
    http://en.kioskea.net/faq/3786-limit...rces-of-ubuntu

    However, how to do this globally, so that any app that behaves in a dangerous way would be killed?

    I believe something like this was a default in the days of Edgy, as my IRC bot would often get killed by the system if it ran too long (it had a memory leak). What happened to that? Another move closer to being Windows?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    NH USA
    Beans
    1,484
    Distro
    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: How to prevent apps from taking all the resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by zoffix View Post
    Hey,

    How do I make it so that a single app could not kill my entire system just by taking all the RAM?

    Often times a rogue app starts to chew up all my RAM and by the time I realize it, my hard drive is swapping faster than a swingers couple and several seconds later even my cursor is not responding.

    I found this page, but it talks about limiting particular apps:
    http://en.kioskea.net/faq/3786-limit...rces-of-ubuntu

    However, how to do this globally, so that any app that behaves in a dangerous way would be killed?

    I believe something like this was a default in the days of Edgy, as my IRC bot would often get killed by the system if it ran too long (it had a memory leak). What happened to that? Another move closer to being Windows?
    I have never had this happen to me in many years of using Ubuntu. I guess the first thing to do is ascertain which program is responsible. "Often times a rogue app" isn't really much to go on - I would guess that you have one application with a problem. There just aren't hordes of rogue apps lurking out there...

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Beans
    9

    Re: How to prevent apps from taking all the resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by sgage View Post
    I have never had this happen to me in many years of using Ubuntu. I guess the first thing to do is ascertain which program is responsible. "Often times a rogue app" isn't really much to go on - I would guess that you have one application with a problem. There just aren't hordes of rogue apps lurking out there...
    No, it happens with different apps, and it has more to do with, say, opening too big a file with GIMP, or what happened this morning: Firefox opening an HTML file with a ton of images.

    If it were just one app, I could well use the method described in that link I mentioned in OP.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Beans
    9

    Re: How to prevent apps from taking all the resources?

    Put it another way:

    On my webserver that runs some flavour of Linux, if I run any script that's resource heavy, it gets killed without so much as a how do you do...

    How to implement that policy on my Ubuntu box?

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •