Hard aggregate process-tree memory enforcement on macOS

App & System Services Core OS
junithedr OP
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Is there a publicly supported macOS API, entitlement, or framework capable of enforcing a hard 64 MiB aggregate memory ceiling across a process tree, including its supervisor, observer, and descendants?

Enforcement must be established before workload execution, survive fork/exec, and remain effective if the controlling process crashes.

We have examined per-process resource limits and process-memory reporting, but these do not establish the required aggregate guarantee.

If supported, which API and enforcement mechanism should we use? If not, is there a documented platform limitation?

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DTS Engineer OP
Apple

Is there a publicly supported macOS API, entitlement, or framework capable of enforcing a hard 64 MiB aggregate memory ceiling across a process tree, including its supervisor, observer, and descendants?

No. Setting aside the enforcement mechanism (which also doesn't exist), the system manages memory in terms of processes (not groups), which means there isn't really a built in mechanism which woud automatically aggregate the usage across processes, much less track/enforce it.

If not, is there a documented platform limitation?

In general, we don't really attempt to document all the things our system doesn't "do" or support.

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Kevin Elliott
DTS Engineer, CoreOS/Hardware