Re: [PATCH] Documentation: Clarify usage of memory limits

[Johannes Weiner]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2023 at 11:38:19AM -0700, Dan Schatzberg wrote:
> The existing documentation refers to memory.high as the "main mechanism
> to control memory usage." This seems incorrect to me - memory.high can
> result in reclaim pressure which simply leads to stalls unless some
> external component observes and actions on it (e.g. systemd-oomd can be
> used for this purpose). While this is feasible, users are unaware of
> this interaction and are led to believe that memory.high alone is an
> effective mechanism for limiting memory.
> 
> The documentation should recommend the use of memory.max as the
> effective way to enforce memory limits - it triggers reclaim and results
> in OOM kills by itself.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dan Schatzberg <schatzberg.dan@xxxxxxxxx>

Yeah, this is quite stale. How this ended up working in practice is a
bit different from how we initially conceived it.

Thanks for updating it.

Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>