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Out of memory: Kill process … or sacrifice child is a Linux kernel OOM-killer message. It means the kernel could not satisfy a memory allocation after trying to reclaim memory, so it evaluated eligible processes as possible victims. “Sacrifice child” refers to a process-tree selection rule, not a person—and the message alone does not prove that the named program caused all the memory pressure.
What “or sacrifice child” means
The line comes from the Linux kernel’s out-of-memory (OOM) handling. When memory reclaim cannot free enough memory to satisfy an allocation, the kernel may invoke the OOM killer and log a process candidate, its badness score, and the phrase or sacrifice child.
In the documented implementation, the kernel can consider eligible child processes that have a different memory context from their parent. It may select the child with the highest oom_badness() score. The stated rationale is to free memory while losing as little work as possible. This is process-tree terminology; it does not mean a human child.
The precise child-selection behavior depends on the kernel version. A 2019 patch discussion records removal of an older preference for killing children before their parent, so do not assume this phrase describes an identical rule on every Linux system. Record the distribution kernel package or uname -a output when investigating the event.
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What the OOM score tells you
The score is a victim-selection ranking, not a percentage chance of being killed or a measurement that can be compared universally between machines. The kernel’s allowed-memory context can be the whole system, a cpuset, a memory policy, or a memory-controller limit; the same numeric score can therefore represent different circumstances.
/proc/<pid>/oom_scoreshows the process’s current OOM badness score./proc/<pid>/oom_score_adjshows the userspace adjustment to that score. Its documented range is -1000 to +1000.
The kernel documentation describes the adjusted scale as roughly 0 (“never kill”) to 1000 (“always kill”). Those descriptions indicate relative preference, not an absolute promise. Setting oom_score_adj to -1000 is the protection value that disables OOM killing for that task. Protecting one task shifts pressure to other eligible tasks; it does not create memory or prevent an OOM event.
Determine whether it was a system-wide or cgroup OOM
A service or container can reach its own memory limit while the host still appears to have free memory. With cgroup v2, if usage reaches memory.max and reclaim cannot bring it down, the kernel invokes the OOM killer within that cgroup. A host-level memory snapshot alone may therefore miss the limit that triggered the event.
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Find the service or container’s cgroup directory, then inspect these cgroup v2 files there:
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memory.current: current memory usage.memory.max: the configured memory ceiling.memory.events: hierarchical event counts, includingoomandoom_kill.memory.events.local: event counts local to that cgroup rather than its hierarchy.memory.stat: memory statistics that help characterize usage.
The kernel documentation defines oom as tracking allocations approaching the limit and oom_kill as tracking processes killed by an OOM killer. Read the counters in context: hierarchical and local counts answer different questions.
Diagnose the event before changing settings
- Preserve the kernel log. Run
journalctl -k -bfor kernel messages from the current boot, or usedmesgwhere permitted. Keep the timestamp, theinvoked oom-killerline,gfp_mask, allocationorder,oom_score_adj, selected PID, and subsequentKilled processline. The surrounding lines can distinguish the trigger from the victim-selection record. - Identify the process and owner. If the PID still exists, inspect
/proc/<pid>/cmdline, service-manager status, container metadata, and application logs. The process may already have exited, in which case use the kernel log and service history to identify it. - Check the relevant memory boundary. For a cgroup v2 workload, find its cgroup path and read
memory.current,memory.max,memory.events,memory.events.local, andmemory.stat. Compare the event counters and usage with the configured limit. - Correlate memory growth with workload changes. Check for an unbounded cache, a leak, a concurrency spike, large requests, fork bursts, or a container limit below the application’s working set. These are hypotheses to test against resident-set and cgroup telemetry, not conclusions established by the OOM line.
- Inspect victim preferences. Check
/proc/<pid>/oom_score,/proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj, and the service or container configuration before changing any score control.
Choose a fix that matches the evidence
Reduce the workload’s memory demand
If measurements show a leak or excessive peak usage, fix the leak, cap caches, reduce concurrency, stream large inputs, or correct a runaway worker. Validate the change using process resident-set measurements and cgroup telemetry; a single event log does not identify which workload behavior needs correction.
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Raise a cgroup limit only when capacity supports it
Increasing memory.max can be appropriate when the workload needs more memory and the host has capacity for it. If the host cannot support the larger working set, raising the ceiling can move the failure rather than solve it.
Add swap or physical memory for demonstrated system-wide shortage
Consider swap or more physical memory when system measurements show a system-wide shortage and the resulting latency and reliability trade-offs are acceptable. The OOM message by itself does not establish that additional hardware or swap is the right remedy.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsUse OOM score adjustment only for an intentional priority
Adjust oom_score_adj when there is a deliberate policy about which task should survive under pressure. The -1000 setting protects that task from OOM killing, but leaves other eligible tasks to bear the pressure. Avoid treating it as a general way to prevent OOM events.
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Use group termination when partial survival is unsafe
On cgroup v2, memory.oom.group=1 treats the cgroup and its descendants as an indivisible workload: the group is killed together or not at all. Tasks protected with oom_score_adj=-1000 remain exceptions. This can help when a partially terminated workload would be inconsistent, but it is a termination policy, not a memory-capacity fix.
Do not confuse this with an application-level “OutOfMemoryError”
The quoted Out of memory: Kill process wording is a kernel log message about Linux memory allocation and process selection. An application runtime can also report its own out-of-memory error. If you see both, use the timestamps and application logs to determine whether the runtime error preceded the kernel kill or whether they describe separate failures.
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