Section 8 · System administration

bcc-oomkill.8

Package: bcc-tools

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oomkill

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
REQUIREMENTS
EXAMPLES
FIELDS
OVERHEAD
SOURCE
OS
STABILITY
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO

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

STABILITY

Unstable - in development.

AUTHOR

Brendan Gregg