[SOLVED] Memory allocation for a command

zetrotrack000 · 11-19-2014, 02:14 PM

Hi
How can I allocate (physical) memory to a command? For instance, if I want the 'cp' command to not to use memory more than 1 GB then how can I do it?
Regards

szboardstretcher · 11-19-2014, 02:41 PM

Someone is going to suggest ulimit, but i'd suggest:

You can use the timeout program for this.

https://github.com/pshved/timeout

zetrotrack000 · 11-19-2014, 03:00 PM

I have just tried your suggestion 'timeout'. However there is no confirmation that 'timeout' is actually allocating memory, as when I give memory 100 MB and when 1 GB, both times, 'ps aux' is showing that 'cp' is utilizing 7 percent memory.

corp769 · 11-19-2014, 03:01 PM

You can use ulimit to do this (just a wrapper for setrlimit). As an example:

Code:

(ulimit -d 10000 -m 10000 -v 10000; [command])

Make sure to run ulimit within its own script, or run it before cp/etc within its own function, as this is used to set global limits. The -d flag is your data segment size, -m is maximum memory size, and -v is max virtual memory size. Use ulimit -a to see what all can be set.

You can also use cgroups as well, see here for more information: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documenta...ps/cgroups.txt

Ninja edit: Thanks to szboardstretcher for reminding me of timeout, almost forgot about that!

zetrotrack000 · 11-20-2014, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corp769

You can use ulimit to do this (just a wrapper for setrlimit). As an example:

Code:

(ulimit -d 10000 -m 10000 -v 10000; [command])

Make sure to run ulimit within its own script, or run it before cp/etc within its own function, as this is used to set global limits. The -d flag is your data segment size, -m is maximum memory size, and -v is max virtual memory size. Use ulimit -a to see what all can be set.

You can also use cgroups as well, see here for more information: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documenta...ps/cgroups.txt

Ninja edit: Thanks to szboardstretcher for reminding me of timeout, almost forgot about that!

Thanks a lot