System-D-OOMD - Killing Flatpak Too Fast

Ask Fedora
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EDIT: SAYS SOLVED, NOT SOLVED. FEDORA TIGHTENED System-D-OOMD even further than it was, so this whole work around no longer works and nothing else I’ve tried worked. I walked away. Find another distro until you don’t have to fight the OS at ever step of the way.

I have been trying to find out what is killing my apps on Fedora 42/43. So when I updated to 43 I dug into it and provided my system logs, traces, and all journalctrl -e entries to AI to parse all the information I’m feeding it, because I can rarely find exactly when it happens to crash and even the AI agrees with me.

“It’s still the same killer — systemd-oomd — and it’s even faster now because Chrome connected two streams at once → memory spiked to 430 MiB → oomd panicked and SIGKILLed the Flatpak (status 137 again).”

It’s insane that a 430MB spike was what caused this to be killed by oomd. So I made Fedora completely ignore the oomd and memory usage, regardless, and keep it going. It was happening to me all the time on 42 using Chrome. I know, Chrome, not Firefox. Well I tried using Firefox and other non-flatpak versions of everything and oomd was still killing my apps with me in the middle of using them with NO warning at all.

Now, if Fefora or anything Linux is to come to the masses, it MUST be able to function correctly on 8GB of RAM. RAM is VERY VERY expensive right now for reasons unknown, unless it’s for AI ramp up causing major shortages, which they can easily ramp for. There is a TON of premium business laptops that have very good processors and very good and FAST storage systems with Gen4x(4) very VERY fast NVMe storage. My personal drive is a Black WD SN770 1TB.

I’ve had to fix the ZRAM, include a failover SWAP partition - IN ADDITION to the in-built RAM. If it can’t run properly on 8GB of RAM you’re going to have a battle for adoption, as most mid-low end laptops came with 8GB for a WHILE. Only now being 16GB standard.

I hope this is the end of my issue with Fedora, as I’ve always picked it as my Linux OS of choice, with Kubuntu being a distant second, but the installer needs to be aware of 8GB RAM laptops and partition and portion ZRAM accordingly. For notebooks with more RAM, that might now be so necessary, but 8GB… Put a checkbox or an auto-check for 8GB and plan accordingly.

EDIT: Autocarrot got my title wrong. *OOMD.

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To those interested, this was the fix and it was only for one app, really. It drove me batty. It was JamesDSP FlatPak for the pitiful sound of my ASUS laptop without the Windows vendor locked drivers. Just past a certain point, or every once in a while keep an eye on your memory usage, or use a KDE RAM Monitor Widget. :slight_smile: I hope this helps at least someone.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/user@1000.service.d
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/user@1000.service.d/no-oom-for-jamesdsp.conf > /dev/null <<EOF
[Service]
# Disable oomd killing for ALL Flatpaks run by jaybird (uid 1000)
MemoryHigh=infinity
MemoryMax=infinity
MemorySwapMax=infinity
EOF

Then:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart systemd-oomd

(I would recommend a full system restart at this point, since you just changed a LOT of how Fedora treats FlatPaks… a good restart is needed, IMO.)

Why the Old oom_score_adj Trick Stopped Working

  • Old kernel oom-killer
  • New Fedora 40+ → systemd-oomd + cgroups v2 → completely ignores it for sandboxed apps

So, basically:

  • MemoryHigh/Max=infinity = “never throttle or kill this user’s processes for memory”
  • It applies to every Flatpak you run (JamesDSP, EasyEffects, etc.) — no more 137 deaths
  • It’s the official workaround used by every pro-audio Fedora user in 2025 (EasyEffects devs even recommend it)
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Updates as of 11/18/25 have broken the script. You’ll have to re-do it.

EDIT: Fedora tightened oomd again. The user-slice override no longer works reliably. I’m not going to fight this much longer. I’m out if this happens once more. If you’re fighting me USING the OS, I AM THE USER, not Fedora. If I want it open, and have it installed and set to open, DO NOT tighten it any more. I’ll UN-TIGHTEN it. I’m reallllly not going to fight my own OS. I’ve done that with Windows for long enough. I’m not going to be TOLD what can and can’t run on this OS, at all. If I want it to run, it will. You’re actively hurting a part of your audience that has to use these things or else AUDIO DOESN’T WORK CORRECTLY.

EDIT2: Yea, I’m out. Fedora, good luck on the systemd-oomd tightening. One less user to complain about your asinine policy. Thanks, but no. :slight_smile:
Even the AI that had to parse all my logs agrees with me. The crashes were too random to track in RT while I’m working so I just gathered the logs and ran them through AI to see what was causing all the problems…

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