[zbentley]

PSI polling is also good, but there’s no substitute for knowing for sure that the OOM killer is awake and hunting.

[man8alexd]

You can't know when the OOM killer is awake and hunting. The kernel doesn't know that.

[zbentley]

The approach I originally described provides a useful early warning system for that condition. It’s not perfect, but has proven useful and better than nothing many times.