NAME¶

oomkill - Trace oom_kill_process(). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.

SYNOPSIS¶

oomkill

DESCRIPTION¶

This traces the kernel out-of-memory killer, and prints basic details, including the system load averages at the time of the OOM kill. This can provide more context on the system state at the time: was it getting busier or steady, based on the load averages? This tool may also be useful to customize for investigations; for example, by adding other task_struct details at the time of OOM.

This program is also a basic example of eBPF/bcc.

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

REQUIREMENTS¶

CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

EXAMPLES¶

Trace OOM kill events:

# oomkill

FIELDS¶

Triggered by ...

The process ID and process name of the task that was running when another task was OOM killed.

OOM kill of ...

The process ID and name of the target process that was OOM killed.

loadavg

Contents of /proc/loadavg. The first three numbers are 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages (where the average is an exponentially damped moving sum, and those numbers are constants in the equation); then there is the number of running tasks, a slash, and the total number of tasks; and then the last number is the last PID to be created.

OVERHEAD¶

Negligible.

SOURCE¶

This is from bcc.

https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

OS¶

Linux

AUTHOR¶

Brendan Gregg

SEE ALSO¶

memleak(8)