BOoM Viewer

Better Out of Memory Viewer - A web application for analyzing Linux OOM (Out of Memory) kill logs.

Disclaimer

⚠️ Warning This project is in early development stage. The parser may not correctly handle all OOM log formats. Use with caution and always verify critical information manually.

• I am not a frontend software engineer so I use CLAUDE to help me build this, so I can easily view and share Out of Memory traces.

Screenshot

Alpha online access

• https://boom.cyprien.eu/

Features

• Parse and analyze Linux kernel OOM kill logs
• Extract structured information: trigger process, memory statistics, process list, kill decision
• Visual memory bars and sortable process tables
• Shareable URLs - paste a log, get a compressed URL to share
• Client-side only - no data sent to any server

Demo

Paste your OOM log content and get an instant analysis with:

• System information (kernel version, hardware)
• Memory breakdown (anonymous, file, shmem, swap)
• Process list with memory usage
• Kill decision details

Installation for development

# Clone the repository
cd boom-viewer

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server
npm run dev

Usage

1. Open the application in your browser
2. Paste your OOM kill log (from dmesg, journalctl, or /var/log/messages)
3. Click "Analyze" to parse and visualize the log
4. Share the generated URL with others

Extracting OOM Logs

# From dmesg
dmesg | grep -A 200 "invoked oom-killer"

# From journalctl
journalctl -k | grep -A 200 "invoked oom-killer"

# From log files
grep -A 200 "invoked oom-killer" /var/log/messages

Tech Stack

• Framework: React 19 + TypeScript
• Build Tool: Vite 7
• Styling: TailwindCSS
• Compression: Brotli (via brotli-wasm)
• Testing: Vitest

Development

# Start development server
npm run dev

# Run tests
npm test

# Run tests once
npm run test:run

# Run tests with coverage
npm run test:coverage

# Build for production
npm run build

# Preview production build
npm run preview

# Lint code
npm run lint

Test Fixtures

The parser is tested against real-world OOM logs stored in tests/fixtures/:

To add a new test fixture:

1. Add your .txt file to tests/fixtures/
2. Run npm test - the new fixture will be automatically tested
3. All fixtures must pass the core parsing tests (trigger, system info, memory, processes, etc.)

Docker

Build and run the production image:

# Build the image
docker build -t boom-viewer .

# Run the container
docker run -p 8080:80 boom-viewer

Then open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Known Limitations

The parser has been tested against multiple OOM log formats and handles most cases correctly. However, some edge cases remain:

Parsing Limitations

1. DMA Zone: The DMA memory zone (without "32") is not extracted due to a regex pattern limitation

   • DMA32 and Normal zones are parsed correctly
   • Buddy info for the plain DMA zone is also skipped

2. Page Tables: Multi-line memory info fields like pagetables on continuation lines may return 0

   • This occurs when the field appears on a line without a timestamp prefix

3. RIP Register: The RIP register value is partially truncated

   • Format 0033:0x65c2a5 is parsed as 0033:0 due to the x character not being in the regex character class
   • Other registers (RSP, RAX, RBX, etc.) parse correctly

Testing

All limitations are documented in the test suite with specific test cases. The parser is tested against multiple real-world OOM log fixtures to ensure reliability.

Future Improvements

These limitations will be addressed in future releases. Contributions to improve the parser are welcome!

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is open source. See the LICENSE file for details.