OpenCloud Memory Usage

[l33]

One of the features I came to try OpenCloud was its low system requirements. I have put OpenCloud in a virtual machine with 4 GB RAM and it runs more or less the documented docker-compose setup. Using it I regularly observe the opencloud process claiming all memory and rendering the vm unusable because it starts to swap like there is no tomorrow. Granted, I have ingested lots of files in the setup but I would have expected the system requirements mentioning it if this was an issue. It only points out that more resources are required if there are more users. In my setup it is just me.

I was wondering if there is any way to tell what is causing opencloud allocating that much memory. I noticed that this seems mostly correlating with me starting a sync on the desktop app.

[l33]

After increasing memory and still running into swap and OOM killer issues I found a README.md in the repository mentioning GOMEMLIMIT being set to 0.9. Assuming that means opencloud may use up to 90% of the available memory I guess that explains why increasing memory does not help.

I went on to set AUTOMEMEMLIMIT=off and GOMEMLIMIT=2GiB in the .env file of my opencloud-compose deployment and so far it looks a lot better. Now memory usage looks a lot more manageable.

[l33]

I guess my excitement on this was premature. Even with those variables set in the OpenCloud container I am still seeing it still allocating memory way beyond the configured 2GiB. I currently have 5GiB RAM and 1GiB swap and the opencloud process alone takes almost 5GiB.

[micbar]

@butonic @rhafer what information can we get to understand the problem?

[micbar]

I went on to set AUTOMEMEMLIMIT=off and GOMEMLIMIT=2GiB in the .env file of my opencloud-compose deployment and so far it looks a lot better. Now memory usage looks a lot more manageable.

I think that doesn’t push the env value to the container. Can you check the value inside the container?

[l33]

On 18. Dec 2025, at 09:44, Michael Barz ***@***.***> wrote:  I went on to set AUTOMEMEMLIMIT=off and GOMEMLIMIT=2GiB in the .env file of my opencloud-compose deployment and so far it looks a lot better. Now memory usage looks a lot more manageable. I think that doesn’t push the env value to the container. Can you check the value inside the container?

That is correct. I noticed that earlier and went on to set them in the docker-compose.yml. However, that also did not have any effect and the issue persisted. I went on to set `GOGC=50` (while keeping the others) and now memory usage looks stable. I will keep observing its change over the next few days. I have not yet tested if the others are required or can be left out.

[l33]

I have had no memory issues since I set GOGC=50. I have not yet tested if setting AUTOMEMEMLIMIT=off and GOMEMLIMIT=2GiB is required.