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I'm trying to limit the memory usage of a systemd service, but the MemoryMax setting doesn't seem to be applied. Here's my situation:

In my service file /etc/systemd/system/discordsearch.service, I have set this under [Service]:

MemoryAccounting=true MemoryMax=2GB

However, when I check the service status with systemctl status discordsearch, I see:

Memory: 3.6G

Furthermore, when I run systemctl show discordsearch.service | grep Memory, I get:

MemoryCurrent=1195773952 MemoryAvailable=infinity MemoryAccounting=yes MemoryHigh=infinity MemoryMax=infinity MemoryLimit=infinity

This shows that MemoryMax is set to infinity, not the 2GB I specified in the service file.

I've tried the following:

  1. Reloading systemd with sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  2. Restarting the service with sudo systemctl restart discordsearch

/etc/systemd/system/discordsearch.service:

[Unit] Description=discordsearch [Service] Environment="LOCALE_ARCHIVE=/nix/store/djm14qz135r1cfjsid90qryxgsw2i349-glibc-locales-2.37-45/lib/locale/locale-archive" Environment="PATH=/nix/store/cm1sfanx42miqdzbwd5alxmg9lg96nag-yj-5.1.0/bin:/nix/store/l9mg93sgx50y88p5rr6x1vib6j1rjsds-coreutils-9.1/bin:/nix/store/yknc37wfb1hbnmgwmp4bm96rxwzsc692-findutils-4.9.0/bin:/nix/store/bj8a14pqhmvlha8hyv1p8bkd9kmykgjy-gnugrep-3.7/bin:/nix/store/agq64rvl0aj88ckm0kzaqgk2ddq8bvz8-gnused-4.9/bin:/nix/store/f9wkksb3lslf6q90i6c2r3qji7qcp0f2-systemd-253.6/bin:/nix/store/cm1sfanx42miqdzbwd5alxmg9lg96nag-yj-5.1.0/sbin:/nix/store/l9mg93sgx50y88p5rr6x1vib6j1rjsds-coreutils-9.1/sbin:/nix/store/yknc37wfb1hbnmgwmp4bm96rxwzsc692-findutils-4.9.0/sbin:/nix/store/bj8a14pqhmvlha8hyv1p8bkd9kmykgjy-gnugrep-3.7/sbin:/nix/store/agq64rvl0aj88ckm0kzaqgk2ddq8bvz8-gnused-4.9/sbin:/nix/store/f9wkksb3lslf6q90i6c2r3qji7qcp0f2-systemd-253.6/sbin" Environment="TZDIR=/nix/store/x376xyviyrg5rafwk5a261lviv0l9paw-tzdata-2023c/share/zoneinfo" ExecStart=/nix/store/lj1p39b4sp4k7g6qzdc0m2s6imga9yxy-HaskellNixCabalStarter-0.1.0.0/bin/discord-app MemoryAccounting=true MemoryMax=2GB Restart=always RestartSec=1 Type=simple WorkingDirectory=%h/discordsearch
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1 Answer 1

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2

This is just a "unit typo". From man systemd.resource-control:

Takes a memory size in bytes. If the value is suffixed with K, M, G or T, the specified memory size is parsed as Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, or Terabytes (with the base 1024), respectively.

KB, MB, GB, TB are not valid and lead to an infinity setting.

This should have appeared in the systemd log (journalctl):

[...] Invalid memory limit '1GB', ignoring: Invalid argument

You can use systemd-analyze verify --user /path/to/unit/file/example.service to verify a correct unit file.

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