TLDR Dev · ARTICLES & TUTORIALS
POSTGRESQL AND THE OOM KILLER: WHY WE USE STRICT MEMORY OVERCOMMIT
Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter
Strict memory overcommit in PostgreSQL is necessary for preventing catastrophic out-of-memory (OOM) kills, as it allows the database to handle memory allocation failures gracefully without impacting all connections. A kernel bug in Ubicloud's product temporarily disrupted this configuration, showing the importance of careful management of memory limits to guarantee system stability while running PostgreSQL in production environments.