Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

[Pkill9]

I think that the earlyoom service is a necessity for a Guix system
desktop.

For those who don't know what it does, EarlyOOM (early out-of-memory)
is a daemon that kills applications when the amount of memory available
falls below a certain percentage of the maximum, by default 10%. There
is already an OOM killer in the kernel, but it's too lax and
applications that consume too much memory can cause the system to
freeze.

I've used this for a while and many times it has kicked in and works
well for my laptop. I think adding it to the default desktop services
will give Guix System on desktop greater stability, which would
encourage adoption of Guix System on the desktop

What do you, reader, think?

Re: Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

[Csepp]

Pkill9 <pkill9@runbox.com> writes:

> I think that the earlyoom service is a necessity for a Guix system
> desktop.
>
> For those who don't know what it does, EarlyOOM (early out-of-memory)
> is a daemon that kills applications when the amount of memory available
> falls below a certain percentage of the maximum, by default 10%. There
> is already an OOM killer in the kernel, but it's too lax and
> applications that consume too much memory can cause the system to
> freeze.
>
> I've used this for a while and many times it has kicked in and works
> well for my laptop. I think adding it to the default desktop services
> will give Guix System on desktop greater stability, which would
> encourage adoption of Guix System on the desktop
>
> What do you, reader, think?

Good idea, iff it works on i686.  Last time I checked it wasn't
building, or rather the docs weren't.  That's why I can't use it on my
netbook, which needs it the most.

Re: Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

[jbranso]

October 17, 2022 7:24 AM, "Pkill9" <pkill9@runbox.com> wrote:

> I think that the earlyoom service is a necessity for a Guix system
> desktop.
> 
> For those who don't know what it does, EarlyOOM (early out-of-memory)
> is a daemon that kills applications when the amount of memory available
> falls below a certain percentage of the maximum, by default 10%. There
> is already an OOM killer in the kernel, but it's too lax and
> applications that consume too much memory can cause the system to
> freeze.
> 
> I've used this for a while and many times it has kicked in and works
> well for my laptop. I think adding it to the default desktop services
> will give Guix System on desktop greater stability, which would
> encourage adoption of Guix System on the desktop
> 
> What do you, reader, think?

+1

Applications to kill: icecat, chromium, firefox, chromium, blender,
 etc.

I would recommend that we do include "firefox" and "chromium" as
applications that we would kill.  I use nongnu for firefox, and 
I bet there are others that use stock chromium or things like it.

Just me 2 cents.

Joshua

Re: Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

jbranso@dismail.de writes:

> October 17, 2022 7:24 AM, "Pkill9" <pkill9@runbox.com> wrote:
>
>> I think that the earlyoom service is a necessity for a Guix system
>> desktop.
>> 
>> For those who don't know what it does, EarlyOOM (early out-of-memory)
>> is a daemon that kills applications when the amount of memory available
>> falls below a certain percentage of the maximum, by default 10%. There
>> is already an OOM killer in the kernel, but it's too lax and
>> applications that consume too much memory can cause the system to
>> freeze.
>> 
>> I've used this for a while and many times it has kicked in and works
>> well for my laptop. I think adding it to the default desktop services
>> will give Guix System on desktop greater stability, which would
>> encourage adoption of Guix System on the desktop
>> 
>> What do you, reader, think?
>
> +1

+1, but as I mentioned in #47717, I think we'd want to have D-Bus
notifications sent by earlyoom to the desktop, so that a user knows
what's going on (especially since the earlyoom logs suck, it's not even
time stamped).

>
> Applications to kill: icecat, chromium, firefox, chromium, blender,
>  etc.
>
> I would recommend that we do include "firefox" and "chromium" as
> applications that we would kill.  I use nongnu for firefox, and 
> I bet there are others that use stock chromium or things like it.

It's already configurable; I don't think Guix should go out of its way
to add non-free items to its default earlyoom configuration.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: Add earlyoom service to %desktop-services?

[Attila Lendvai]

another +1 from me, too: i've been greatly annoyed by this on my 8GB laptop. on 16GB i'm still occasionally screwed when i compile something large.

i've spent quite some time trying to configure the kernel to no avail.

-- 
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
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