Limit Chrome from eating all the memory and CPU

Description.md

I was tired of Chrome eating all my laptop resources so I decided to put some limit to it with cgroup.

As I was using Ubuntu 12.04 with support for cgroup, I installed the package cgroup-bin and add the following group to the file /etc/cgconfig.conf:

group browsers {
    cpu {
#       Set the relative share of CPU resources equal to 25%
        cpu.shares = "256";
    }
    memory {
#       Allocate at most 1 GB of memory to tasks
        memory.limit_in_bytes = "1G";
#       Apply a soft limit of 512 MB to tasks
        memory.soft_limit_in_bytes = "768M";
    }
}

Then I added one new rule to the file /etc/cgrules.conf to add any new Chrome process launched by my own user (jojeda) to the cgroup browsers:

# user:process                                          subsystems      group
jojeda:/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser       cpu,memory      browsers

And then I restarted the cgconfig service:

$ sudo service cgconfig restart

Now all the new chromium process that I'll launch with my user jojeda will be under the cgroup browsers with its memory and cpu limits.

@juanje, probably, there is a typo:

#       Apply a soft limit of 512 MB to tasks
        memory.soft_limit_in_bytes = "768M";

768 ≠ 512

Okay so cpu.shares allows you to distribute CPU across multiple cgroups.
It does nothing if you have a single cgroup -- just one for chromium.
CPU throttling is necessary for me, and for you too probably.
Otherwise, I get system-wide freezes -- whenever chromium is trying to free up memory? Maybe.

Here's my current setup. Initial results are promising.

group browsers {
  perm {
    task {
      uid = gunar;
      gid = users;
    }
    admin {
      uid = gunar;
      gid = users;
    }
  }
  cpu {
    # Allow chromium to use 6 CPU cores maximum (current machine has 8 cores).
    # See: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Resource_Management_Guide/sect-cpu-Example_Usage.html
    cpu.cfs_quota_us =  600000;
    cpu.cfs_period_us = 100000;
  }
  memory {
    # Allow chromium to use 6GB maximum (current machine has 8GB RAM)
    memory.limit_in_bytes = "6G";
    memory.soft_limit_in_bytes = "5G";
  }
}

See https://github.com/gunar/dotfiles/commit/6acc2a87b10278594db6e72921f33b6495430c40

In Gentoo, you need libcgroup package, the configuration files are in /etc/cgroup/ directory (I actually needed to change the path in /etc/cgroup/cgred.conf to match) and in addition to cgconfig service you need to run (restart) cgred service so the cgrules.conf is interpreted.

One question? This limits are apply for all the chrome processes? 1G for process or it is the maximum memory and cpu for alll the chrome process?

Thanks in advance
Nomar

@kalimalrazif This is very old config and I don't even use it anymore, but I think is 1G for all the processes.
The config defined 1G for the group, so the 1G is to be shared by all processes fo the group. I think...

Ok all the processes then :-) thanks anyway for your answer :-)

For those who want an up-to-date tutorial for Ubuntu, here is one https://www.paranoids.at/cgroup-ubuntu-18-04-howto/