[announce] Timeout Based User-space Low Memory Killer Daemon

[announce] Timeout Based User-space Low Memory Killer Daemon

[Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz]

Hi,

I would like to announce the first public version of my timeout based
user-space low memory killer daemon (tbulmkd).  It is based on idea
that user-space applications can be divided into two classes,
foreground and background ones.  Foreground processes are visible in
graphical user interface (GUI) and therefore shouldn't be terminated
first when memory usage gets too high.  OTOH background processes are
no longer visible in GUI and are pro-actively being killed to keep
overall memory usage smaller.  Actual daemon implementation is heavily
based on the user-space low memory killer daemon (ulmkd) from Anton
Vorontsov (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.mm/84302).

The program is available at:

	https://github.com/bzolnier/tbulmkd

kernel/add-tbulmkd-entries.patch needs to be applied to the kernel
that would be used with tbulmkd.  It adds /proc/$pid/activity and
/proc/$pid/activity_time files.  Write '0' to activity file to mark
the process as background one and '1' (the default value) to mark
it as foreground one.  Please note that this interface is just for
a demonstration of tbulmkd functionality and will be changed in
the future.

Best regards,
--
Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz
Samsung Poland R&D Center

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Re: [announce] Timeout Based User-space Low Memory Killer Daemon

[Anton Vorontsov]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 03:27:43PM +0100, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to announce the first public version of my timeout based
> user-space low memory killer daemon (tbulmkd).  It is based on idea
> that user-space applications can be divided into two classes,
> foreground and background ones.  Foreground processes are visible in
> graphical user interface (GUI) and therefore shouldn't be terminated
> first when memory usage gets too high.  OTOH background processes are
> no longer visible in GUI and are pro-actively being killed to keep
> overall memory usage smaller.  Actual daemon implementation is heavily
> based on the user-space low memory killer daemon (ulmkd) from Anton
> Vorontsov (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.mm/84302).
> 
> The program is available at:
> 
> 	https://github.com/bzolnier/tbulmkd

Wow, that's so great. Now it seems more like an Activity Manager.

I didn't look very close to it, but I see that you extensively use cgroups
to actually group the processes, i.e. 'daemons' cgroup, 'apps' cgroup.

So, it might be a very good start for truly cross-platform, truly generic
way to implement Activity Manager. :)

I'm surely interested in how it evolves, and will take a closer look soon.

Thanks!

> kernel/add-tbulmkd-entries.patch needs to be applied to the kernel
> that would be used with tbulmkd.  It adds /proc/$pid/activity and
> /proc/$pid/activity_time files.  Write '0' to activity file to mark
> the process as background one and '1' (the default value) to mark
> it as foreground one.  Please note that this interface is just for
> a demonstration of tbulmkd functionality and will be changed in
> the future.
> 
> Best regards,
> --
> Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz
> Samsung Poland R&D Center

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