procpidoomscoreadj

Procpidoomscoreadj refers to the Linux kernel interface exposed under /proc/[pid]/oom_score_adj, which allows adjusting the Out-Of-Memory (OOM) killer’s scoring for an individual process. While “procpidoomscoreadj” is not an official term, it is commonly used to describe the combination of /proc, a process ID, and the oom_score_adj control used to influence which processes are terminated under memory pressure.

The OOM killer is a mechanism the kernel uses to recover memory when the system is critically low. For each running process, the kernel assigns an OOM score, with higher scores indicating a greater likelihood of being selected as a victim. The oom_score_adj value is added to this base score to fine-tune the process’s risk under pressure. Values range from -1000 to 1000: negative values reduce the chance of being killed, while positive values increase it. A value of -1000 effectively shields the process from the OOM killer, and 1000 makes it a high-priority target for termination. The default is typically 0.

Usage involves reading or writing to /proc/[pid]/oom_score_adj. A user with appropriate privileges (the process owner or the superuser) can set a value to influence behavior, for example to protect a long-running critical service or, in some cases, to push less important tasks toward termination first. Writes may be restricted by security policies or container isolation in modern systems.

Security and compatibility notes: enabling or altering oom_score_adj should be done with care, as it can affect system stability. Some environments (containers or hardened setups) may restrict access to this file. In practice, it complements other memory management tools, such as cgroups, for shaping memory pressure responses.