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I can set a memory limit for users like so:

systemctl set-property user-UID.slice MemoryHigh=24G

Is there a way for this to apply for all users? I would like each user to get 24G, not a total of 24G for all user processes (which I think would be the result of setting it on user.slice directly).

kai
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1 Answers1

10

There seems no officially supported way to do that. (This is incorrect. See the bottom) An officially discouraged way (because it manipulates the cgroup) is as follows:

Make the following file as /etc/systemd/system/[email protected]/set-memhigh.conf

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStartPost=+/root/set-memoryhigh.sh %i

Then make the following file as "/root/set-memoryhigh.sh"

#!/bin/bash
exec >>/var/tmp/log.txt 2>&1 # for logging
set -x # for logging 
for d in /sys/fs/cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/user.slice /sys/fs/cgroup/user.slice/user-$1.slice; do
  echo "+memory" >>${d}/cgroup.subtree_control
done
/bin/echo "24G" >> /sys/fs/cgroup/user.slice/user-$1.slice/memory.high

You can see if it works or not by running

cat /sys/fs/cgroup/user.slice/user-${UID}.slice/memory.high

If "/sys/fs/cgroup/user.slice" does not exist, then the unified cgroup hierarchy is not enabled. We have to enable it as https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/452728/297666

Although it works, I am not sure if you like this...

Note added on July 25: Making the following file as /etc/systemd/system/user-1000.slice for each user (replacing 1000 by user's UID) imposes a memory limitation on that user. I verified it on systemd 237 on ubuntu 18.04 and Debian strecth with systemd 237 installed from stretch-backports:

[Slice]
Slice=user.slice
MemoryHigh=24G

The inconvenience is that we have to make the above file for each user. With systemd 239, we can make the above file as /etc/systemd/system/user-.slice.d/memory.conf and the memory limitation is imposed on every user. But there is a bug in systemd 239 (this bug was corrected in 240) and it does not work as intended. To work around the bug, make the following file as user-0.slice and run systemctl enable user-0.slice. We do not have to make the following file for each user.

[Unit]
Before=systemd-logind.service
[Slice]
Slice=user.slice
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Ryutaroh Matsumoto
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  • This looks like a decent workaround in the meantime, but I'll hold out for a more official version. – kai Jul 01 '18 at 21:37
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    @kai I found official ways for memory limitation and added them to the my answer above. Hope it useful. – Ryutaroh Matsumoto Jul 24 '18 at 22:30
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    I'll test it out, but this looks like exactly what I need (except for that bug) – kai Jul 25 '18 at 09:46
  • On Red Hat 8.1, when I set `Slice=user.slice`, I get an error like "Failed to assign slice user.slice to unit user-0.slice, ignoring: Invalid argument" in /var/log/messages – irritable_phd_syndrome Feb 22 '22 at 15:27