Restrict the amount of CPU and memory resources that Chrome can consume.

Description.md

Restrict the amount of CPU and memory resources that Chrome can consume.

Tested on Ubuntu 16.04/Linux Mint 18.

---

Install cgroups:

sudo apt install cgroup-bin

Set up a browser group in /etc/cgconfig.conf to limit the amount of resources Chrome can use:

group browsers {
  perm {
    task {
      uid = jake;
      gid = users;
    }
    admin {
      uid = jake;
      gid = users;
    }
  }
  cpu {
    # Allow chromium to use 2 CPU cores maximum (current machine has 4 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 =  200000;
    cpu.cfs_period_us = 100000;
  }
  memory {
    # Allow chromium to use 6GB maximum (current machine has 16GB RAM)
    memory.limit_in_bytes = "6G";
    memory.soft_limit_in_bytes = "5G";
  }
}

Then add a rule to /etc/cgrules.conf so that any new Chrome processes launched by my own user (jake) are added to the cgroup browsers:

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

Since Ubuntu doesn't provide a systemd service to start cgroups, create your own in /etc/systemd/system/cgroups.service:

[Unit]
Description=Load cgroup configs
After=remote-fs.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStartPre=/bin/echo "Processing /etc/cgconfig.conf..."
ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/cgconfigparser -l /etc/cgconfig.conf
ExecStartPre=/bin/echo "Processing /etc/cgrules.conf..."
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/cgrulesengd --logfile=/var/log/cgrulesengd.log
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally, enable & start the service to load up your rules

sudo systemctl enable --now cgroups.service

---

References:

https://gist.github.com/juanje/9861623
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/cgroups#Persistent_group_configuration
https://askubuntu.com/questions/836469/install-cgconfig-in-ubuntu-16-04
https://bugs.launchpad.net/fuel/+bug/1674633

Thanks. This worked great on Debian/testing.

Here is a script that will "watch" the memory usage counters for the browser group.
https://gist.github.com/bartman/876aa722c071cdcf1115fd468625840c

Note that you shouldn't be running system with systemd combined with other software that messes with cgroups. For details, see https://askubuntu.com/a/1108189/50254

Note that you shouldn't be running system with systemd combined with other software that messes with cgroups. For details, see https://askubuntu.com/a/1108189/50254

In that post you said:

Unfortunately I cannot find any info about how to do that so probably the only way is to start reading systemd documentation and restart from the scratch.

Do you have any advice 3 years later?