Memory Guide

Limit Memory Usage with ulimit Command

The following commands allow you to limit the memory usage for your processes. These limits are specified in kilobytes (KB) and are useful for setting constraints during development, particularly for ensuring your programs do not exceed certain memory thresholds. Here’s how you can set and verify these limits:

ulimit -v 65536     # Limit memory to 64 MB
ulimit -v 131072    # Limit memory to 128 MB
ulimit -v 262144    # Limit memory to 256 MB
ulimit -v 524288    # Limit memory to 512 MB
ulimit -v 1048576   # Limit memory to 1 GB
ulimit -v 2097152   # Limit memory to 2 GB
ulimit -v 4194304   # Limit memory to 4 GB
ulimit -v 8388608   # Limit memory to 8 GB
ulimit -v 16777216  # Limit memory to 16 GB
ulimit -v 33554432  # Limit memory to 32 GB

You may find more details in the ulimit manual page using the command:

man ulimit

Verify Current Limits

To check the current resource limits, you can execute the following command:

ulimit -a

Memory Limits Table

The following table provides a reference for memory limits in both megabytes (MB) and kilobytes (KB):

Memory (MB)	Memory (KB)
64 MB	65,536 KB
128 MB	131,072 KB
256 MB	262,144 KB
512 MB	524,288 KB
1 GB	1,048,576 KB
2 GB	2,097,152 KB
4 GB	4,194,304 KB
8 GB	8,388,608 KB
16 GB	16,777,216 KB
32 GB	33,554,432 KB