Zet - How do I check if earlyoom has killed processes on my dev server?

How do I check if earlyoom has killed processes on my dev server?

Run:

sudo grep -E 'earlyoom.+sending' /var/log/messages

This searches the system log for entries where earlyoom sent a SIGKILL to a process due to low memory.

Each match looks something like:

earlyoom: sending signal 9 to process 12345 (node): mem 15%, swap 85%

The key fields:

• Signal — typically 9 (SIGKILL)
• Process — the PID and process name
• mem / swap — memory pressure at time of kill

No output means no kills

If the command returns nothing, earlyoom hasn’t killed anything — that’s good news.

Why earlyoom?

The default Linux OOM killer tends to wait until the system is already thrashing. earlyoom intervenes earlier, giving processes a chance to shut down cleanly. It’s common on dev servers where memory-heavy tools (Docker, IDEs, databases) compete for RAM.

To see all earlyoom activity (not just kills):

sudo grep earlyoom /var/log/messages

To watch in real-time:

sudo tail -f /var/log/messages | grep earlyoom

#linux #devops #oom #earlyoom #linuxserver