Hi all. I run BOINC (v7.8.6) on a headless Linux machine, and I've been running out of RAM.

The spare memory on this machine varies. I think that the limits I can set for BOINC are an absolute percentage of total memory, and I'd love something more like memory "niceness" ("use up to % of total memory, but yield to higher-priority processes"). Or, something like the storage setting ("leave at least some %/MB of system memory free"). I'll end up setting the limit fairly low if there's no way to make it adapt. Does a setting like that exist?

When you ask a question like this, it's helpful if you give details like CPU model, size of physical RAM, size of swap space, the projects you run, your non-BOINC workload, the Linux distro, etc.

BOINC already has the two settings for %RAM to use when 'in use' and %RAM when 'idle'. My settings are 95%/100% and on my daily driver machine I don't notice any adverse effects. It's not the job of BOINC to interfere with any sort of resource allocation through 'niceness'. That's very much the job of the OS and in my experience the Linux kernel handles that very well. My understanding is that BOINC, by design, runs project applications at low priority so they should get out of the way when a normal priority non-BOINC task needs service.

Perhaps if you describe the total mix of what is running when you "run out of RAM" it might help to get a better answer. If you have enough physical+virtual memory you shouldn't be able to "run out of RAM" unless there's something really wrong with the mix running at the time.

You mention "setting the limit fairly low" and I'm wondering if you might have it so low that some project applications don't have access to enough RAM for them to run. The memory requirements of some science apps can be quite high. Are you getting some sort of 'insufficient RAM' message from BOINC itself?

---

Cheers,
Gary.

Might also be worth upgrading your BOINC. Current version on my boxes is 7.10.2