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# How the Linux OOM Killer Chooses, and Why It Picked Your App
- URL: https://debugly.dev/how-linux-oom-killer-picks-a-victim/
- Published: 2026-09-06T03:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T05:49:00.000Z
- Description: Under memory pressure the kernel kills one process and not another, and it is not random. The oom score is a small arithmetic formula you can read, tune and…
- Author: Rohit Bhadani
- Tags: Deep Dive, DevOps, Debugging

| oom\_score\_adj | Effect                                        |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| \-1000          | Completely exempt from being killed           |
| negative        | Protected, used for things like sshd          |
| 0               | Default, score is purely memory based         |
| positive        | Penalised, used to mark sacrificial processes |

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Published on [debugly.dev](https://debugly.dev/) by [Rohit Bhadani](https://debugly.dev/about/) | Founder of [Krova Cloud](https://krova.cloud/?ref=debugly.dev)