-r flag and flooding of log

[IlyaIndigo]

Problem. earlyoom floods the /var/log/messages log with unnecessary memory status messages.
I want to see only events sending signals to processes in the log.
Does the -r flag affect only the state of memory logging, or also the frequency of polling the memory?
Will -r0 earlyoom work correctly?

[IlyaIndigo]

Apparently, it does not affect the polling frequency, but only on logging.
Why is logging of memory state every second turned on by default?
This is for debugging only!
Many people think that this flag depends on the polling frequency for sending signals to processes.
I propose to set it to 0 by default and to emphasize in the manual that this parameter only affects logging and does not affect the actual polling rate.

[rfjakob]

Yes 0 works, and this is documented in https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom/blob/master/MANPAGE.md#-r-interval .

The default when running as a service is 60 seconds, but you can customize it to your likings:
https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom/blob/master/earlyoom.default#L5

[IlyaIndigo]

man earlyoom
-r INTERVAL
memory report interval in seconds (default 1), set to 0 to disable completely. With earlyoom
v1.2 and higher, floating point numbers are accepted. Due to the adaptive poll rate, when there
is a lot of free memory, the actual interval may be up to 1 second longer than the setting.

The emphasis is on the fact that in 1.2+ you can use decimal numbers, and not on the fact that this affects ONLY logging and does not affect the operation of the service.

[hakavlad]

@IlyaIndigo https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom#configuration-file

Default in the config:

EARLYOOM_ARGS="-r 60"

See also #171.

[IlyaIndigo]

Well, at least fix it in the man page.
And also think about why system administrators, looking at the logs, see this even every 60 seconds, that is, that is, flipping a log for a day, 1440 lines more per day and 433200 lines per month?

[rfjakob]

I tried to make the man page clearer ( c1180be ) and I set -r 3600 in the earlyoom service config file earlyoom.default e1c74d9

Thanks

[hakavlad]

thanks

[IlyaIndigo]

c1180be (default 1.0)

Change please to (default 3600.0)

[rfjakob]

When you execute earlyoom without parameters, the default is used, which is unchanged: 1 second