devvm containment: drop the MemoryHigh throttle band, straight to MemoryMax OOM

t3.viktorbarzin.me went down 2026-07-02 15:42-16:35 UTC: an agent-spawned
12.3G ugrep plateaued inside t3-serve@wizard's MemoryHigh(12G)..MemoryMax(16G)
band. With MemorySwapMax=0 its anon pages were unreclaimable, so the kernel
throttled every task in the cgroup indefinitely (memory.pressure full ~80%,
oom_kill never fired) - the t3 event loop starved, the accept queue rotted,
and the terminal was dead until the hog was SIGKILLed by hand.

The 2026-06-22 design assumed 'throttle to a crawl, then OOM locally'; a hog
that stabilises between high and max never OOMs, so the throttle band is a
livelock zone, not a safety layer. Viktor asked to close that gap: MemoryHigh
is now explicitly infinity on all three work cgroup definitions (t3-serve@
unit, user-<uid>.slice drop-in, docker.slice) so a runaway is cgroup-OOM-
killed at MemoryMax immediately - OOMPolicy=continue already keeps the t3
server alive when a child dies. MemoryMax/MemorySwapMax=0/earlyoom unchanged.
Applied live to the devvm the same day (daemon-reload + runtime set-property
on running cgroups, no session restarts). Post-mortem addendum + runbook
updated in the same commit.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/post-mortems/2026-06-22-devvm-mem-io-overload-containment.md

@@ -129,3 +129,40 @@ heavy user between 12–16G even with RAM free; bump to 16/20 if that bites.
   storm also neuters oomd. earlyoom (free-RAM threshold, swap-independent) is the
   correct pairing. A famous tool that "does OOM" still has to be proven to fire
   under *your* configuration.
+
+## Addendum (2026-07-02): the MemoryHigh throttle band livelocks — removed
+
+The soft-cap layer of this design was falsified in production on 2026-07-02
+(~15:42–16:35 UTC): an agent-spawned `ugrep` (12.35G RSS; `-o` with wide
+alternation captures over a multi-GB `.jsonl` transcript) **plateaued inside
+t3-serve@wizard's `MemoryHigh=12G..MemoryMax=16G` band**. With
+`MemorySwapMax=0` its anonymous pages were unreclaimable, so the kernel parked
+every allocating task of the cgroup in `mem_cgroup_handle_over_high`
+(`memory.pressure full avg60 ≈ 80%`, `memory.events high=882948`, `oom_kill=0`)
+— including the `t3 serve` event loop (~0.5G RSS, pure collateral). The accept
+queue backed up (21 pending connections), t3-probe logged `t3serve: [Errno 104]
+Connection reset by peer`, t3-dispatch logged `proxy error: context canceled`,
+and t3.viktorbarzin.me was dead for its user until the hog was SIGKILLed by
+hand (the D-state high-throttle sleep IS killable; the cgroup dropped 14G→1.4G
+and the service recovered in seconds with no restart).
+
+The Verification bullet above — a soft-capped balloon "throttled to a crawl,
+making no progress and **harming nothing**" — holds only when the hog is alone
+in its cgroup. Sharing the cgroup with a latency-sensitive server, the crawl
+IS the harm: a hog that stabilises below `MemoryMax` never triggers the local
+OOM the design counted on, so the band converts "runaway dies" into "everyone
+in the cgroup stalls forever".
+
+**Fix (same day, admin-approved): `MemoryHigh=infinity` on all three work
+cgroup definitions** — `scripts/t3-serve@.service`, the `user-.slice.d`
+drop-in, and `docker.slice` (`setup-devvm.sh` §10a/§10c). A runaway now runs
+unthrottled into `MemoryMax` and is cgroup-OOM-killed immediately
+(`OOMPolicy=continue` keeps t3-serve itself alive; in slices the kernel kills
+the biggest task). `MemoryMax`, `MemorySwapMax=0`, and earlyoom — the layers
+the stress tests actually validated — are unchanged. Applied live via
+`daemon-reload` + runtime `set-property` on the running cgroups; no session
+restarts.
+
+Lesson: **with `swap=0`, `memory.high` is not a gentler `memory.max` — it is
+an unbounded stall injector for everything sharing the cgroup.** Cap-and-kill
+beats throttle-and-pray for multi-tenant interactive services.

docs/runbooks/t3-drop-attribution.md

@@ -109,10 +109,17 @@ rate(node_pressure_memory_stalled_seconds_total{instance="devvm"}[5m])
 node_memory_SwapFree_bytes{instance="devvm"}
 ```
 
-Guardrails in place (2026-06-10, `scripts/t3-serve@.service`): per-unit
+Guardrails in place (2026-06-10, hardened 2026-07-02; `scripts/t3-serve@.service`):
-`MemoryHigh=12G`, `MemoryMax=16G`, `MemorySwapMax=0`, `OOMPolicy=continue` —
+per-unit `MemoryMax=16G`, `MemorySwapMax=0`, `OOMPolicy=continue`, and
-a runaway agent now OOMs alone inside the cgroup instead of taking the box
+`MemoryHigh=infinity` — deliberately NO soft throttle band. With swap=0, a hog
-(and the WS server) with it.
+plateauing between high and max never OOMs and the kernel high-throttle stalls
+the whole unit: a 12.3G agent `ugrep` livelocked t3-serve@wizard for ~50min on
+2026-07-02 (signature: probe `t3serve` leg `Connection reset by peer`, dispatch
+`proxy error: context canceled`, server D-state in `mem_cgroup_handle_over_high`,
+`ss` backlog on the serve port; fix: SIGKILL the hog — the D-state is killable).
+A runaway agent now OOMs alone at 16G inside the cgroup instead of throttling
+the WS server with it. Post-mortem addendum:
+`docs/post-mortems/2026-06-22-devvm-mem-io-overload-containment.md`.
 
 ## 4. Known root causes (2026-06-10 investigation)
 

scripts/t3-serve@.service

@@ -21,12 +21,19 @@ WorkingDirectory=/home/%i
 ExecStart=/usr/bin/t3 serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port ${T3_PORT} --base-dir /home/%i/.t3
 Restart=on-failure
 RestartSec=5
-# Memory containment (2026-06-10): agent children live in this cgroup; a
+# Memory containment (2026-06-10, amended 2026-07-02): agent children live in
-# runaway agent (10.8G anon on a 23G host) swap-thrashed the whole devvm —
+# this cgroup; a runaway agent (10.8G anon on a 23G host) swap-thrashed the
-# every >20s stall fires the t3 client watchdog (visible "disconnects") —
+# whole devvm — every >20s stall fires the t3 client watchdog (visible
-# then global-OOMed. Cap the cgroup so a runaway OOMs early and locally,
+# "disconnects") — then global-OOMed. Cap the cgroup so a runaway OOMs early
-# and forbid swap so stalls can't smear into minutes-long freezes.
+# and locally, and forbid swap so stalls can't smear into minutes-long freezes.
-MemoryHigh=12G
+# MemoryHigh is DELIBERATELY infinity — do not add a soft band below MemoryMax:
+# with swap=0 a hog that plateaus between high and max is unreclaimable but
+# never OOMs, and the kernel's high-throttle stalls EVERY task in the cgroup
+# (the t3 event loop included) indefinitely. A 12.3G agent ugrep livelocked
+# this unit for ~50min on 2026-07-02 exactly this way. Straight-to-OOM at
+# MemoryMax is the containment; OOMPolicy=continue below keeps the server up.
+# See docs/post-mortems/2026-06-22-devvm-mem-io-overload-containment.md addendum.
+MemoryHigh=infinity
 MemoryMax=16G
 MemorySwapMax=0
 # Default OOMPolicy=stop kills the WHOLE unit (8.5min outage 2026-06-10

scripts/workstation/setup-devvm.sh

@@ -244,9 +244,15 @@ log "service units installed + enabled (t3-dispatch + 3 timers; t3-serve@ per-us
 #     virtual disk into an IO storm + multi-minute freeze (hard-killed 2026-06-22).
 #     t3-serve@ was already capped (its [Service] block); the HOLE was the uncapped
 #     user-<uid>.slice (all ssh/tmux work). Design — per user, on BOTH trees:
-#     MemoryHigh=12G soft (throttles a runaway to a crawl), MemoryMax=16G hard,
+#     MemoryMax=16G hard + MemorySwapMax=0 (work never touches disk swap → no
-#     MemorySwapMax=0 (work never touches disk swap → no thrash; it OOMs locally at
+#     thrash; a runaway is cgroup-OOM-killed locally at the ceiling), plus
-#     the ceiling instead), plus fair-share CPU/IO weights.
+#     fair-share CPU/IO weights.
+#     NO MemoryHigh soft band (removed 2026-07-02; was 12G "throttle to a crawl"):
+#     with swap=0, a hog that PLATEAUS between high and max is unreclaimable but
+#     never OOMs — the kernel parks every task of the cgroup in
+#     mem_cgroup_handle_over_high and the whole tree stalls indefinitely. A 12.3G
+#     agent ugrep livelocked t3-serve@wizard (t3 down ~50min) exactly this way.
+#     Cap-and-kill, never throttle-and-pray — see the post-mortem addendum.
 #     BACKSTOP = earlyoom, NOT systemd-oomd. We first shipped systemd-oomd but it is
 #     INERT with swap=0: its pressure-kill only acts on cgroups doing active reclaim
 #     (pgscan rising), and a no-swap anon workload never reclaims — verified live, a
@@ -260,12 +266,16 @@ log "service units installed + enabled (t3-dispatch + 3 timers; t3-serve@ per-us
 # 10a) per-user caps + fair-share weights on EVERY user-<uid>.slice (ssh/tmux)
 install -d -m 0755 /etc/systemd/system/user-.slice.d
 cat > /etc/systemd/system/user-.slice.d/50-devvm-resource.conf <<'SLICE_EOF'
-# Per-user containment for the shared devvm (setup-devvm.sh §10, 2026-06-22).
+# Per-user containment for the shared devvm (setup-devvm.sh §10, 2026-06-22;
-# Applies to EACH user-<uid>.slice = all of one user's ssh/tmux work. Mirrors the
+# MemoryHigh dropped 2026-07-02). Applies to EACH user-<uid>.slice = all of one
-# t3-serve@.service caps so a user is bounded in whichever surface they work in.
+# user's ssh/tmux work. Mirrors the t3-serve@.service caps so a user is bounded
+# in whichever surface they work in. MemoryHigh stays infinity: with swap=0 a
+# hog plateauing in a high..max band livelocks the entire slice (every ssh/tmux
+# session of that user) instead of dying — straight-to-OOM at MemoryMax is the
+# containment (see post-mortem addendum 2026-07-02).
 [Slice]
 MemoryAccounting=yes
-MemoryHigh=12G
+MemoryHigh=infinity
 MemoryMax=16G
 MemorySwapMax=0
 CPUAccounting=yes
@@ -294,12 +304,14 @@ cat > /etc/systemd/system/docker.slice <<'DOCKER_SLICE_EOF'
 # All docker containers live here (cgroup-parent in /etc/docker/daemon.json) so
 # they share one bounded budget and a runaway container is capped at MemoryMax
 # (cgroup-OOM'd locally) instead of escaping into the uncapped system.slice.
-# setup-devvm.sh §10, 2026-06-22.
+# setup-devvm.sh §10, 2026-06-22; MemoryHigh dropped 2026-07-02 — a container
+# plateauing in the high..max band would throttle-livelock EVERY container in
+# the slice (see post-mortem addendum); MemoryMax OOM is the containment.
 [Unit]
 Description=Docker containers slice (capped)
 [Slice]
 MemoryAccounting=yes
-MemoryHigh=6G
+MemoryHigh=infinity
 MemoryMax=8G
 MemorySwapMax=0
 CPUAccounting=yes