Uploaded image for project: 'Documentation'
  1. Documentation
  2. DOCS-1374

Misleading statement in ulimit docs (memory limits, OOM killer)

    XMLWordPrintableJSON

Details

    • Icon: Bug Bug
    • Resolution: Done
    • Icon: Major - P3 Major - P3
    • Server_Docs_20231030
    • None
    • manual
    • None

    Description

      The footnote at the bottom of the reference/ulimit page currently reads as follows:

      If you limit the resident memory size on a system running MongoDB you risk allowing the operating system to terminate the mongod process under normal situations. Do not set this value. If the operating system (i.e. Linux) kills your mongod, with the OOM killer, check the output of serverStatus and ensure MongoDB is not leaking memory.

      "If you limit the resident memory size on a system running MongoDB you risk allowing the operating system to terminate the mongod process" is misleading; when a process reaches one of its memory limits (data segment size, virtual memory size, resident page count) the operating system does not kill the process, it instead refuses to honor further allocation calls for that limit (e.g. brk/mmap/etc => ENOMEM). The sentence about the OOM killer needs to be moved to a different paragraph; it needs to be made clearer that the OOM killer is not invoked to target processes that have reached their memory limits.

      Attachments

        Activity

          People

            sam.kleinman Sam Kleinman (Inactive)
            rassi J Rassi
            Votes:
            0 Vote for this issue
            Watchers:
            1 Start watching this issue

            Dates

              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved:
              10 years, 45 weeks ago