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Accepted
hamidi
Asked: 2016-06-12 08:38:59 +0800 CST

How to force gcc & ld (make wholly) use less memory?

  • 772

I have to compile a computer generated source with my sources which is too huge and I've no control over it. Since my memory is not much, I've to force make use less memory. Otherwise, it gets killed by OS (precise). What can I do?

12.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    How about adding more swap to your machine as a solution? This will add more virtual memory and may allow you to build your code without the OOM killer killing the compiler. If you don't want to fiddle around with making your swap partition larger your could add a temporary swap file. For example, adding a file based 4GB swap:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=swap.img bs=1M count=4096
mkswap swap.img
chmod 0600 swap.img 
sudo chown root:root swap.img
swapon swap.img
    • 4

  2. Have you tried using nice? It allows to set a custom priority for your processes. nice ranges from -20 to 19, being 19 the lowest priority and -20 the highest. You could try something like this:

    nice -n 19 command_you_want_to_execute

    Example:

    nice -n 19 firefox

    Edit: ellaborating a bit on my response, if your OS kills your process it's because is using resources that are needed for the correct functioning of your system. If you give your process a lower priority, those resources will automatically be allocated to more important system tasks.

    • -1