Public bug reported:

When a process demands increasingly to the limit of memory available the system 
becomes unusable, mouse start to not respond promptly or not at all, and 
eventually the system resets to the logon screen. 
The expected behavior would be not to lose control of the machine but crash 
eventually the process or application asking for resources. 

What I have done?
- Discard hardware problems, testing memory with memtest86+. No issue detected 
there.
- Test without swap file and with swap file of 4Gb (similar to main memory). 
Same crash.
- Following the advise on 
http://askubuntu.com/questions/41778/computer-freezing-on-almost-full-ram-possibly-disk-cache-problem
 set the sysctl vm.min_free_kbytes and adjust swappiness as described here 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/159356/comments/41
With this adjustment the issue have been reduced drastically, I'm not losing 
control of the system even if it slows down when ramping up the swap use.
- I've not yet tried the suggestion here 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/159356/comments/35 because 
with the previous tip the system is behaving much as expected, but I have it in 
the list to test it if I experiment further crashes.

How did I reproduce it?
- First, I experience this when having several chrome tabs open (chrome is 
eating a lot of memory lately being in tabs or in extensions). It's easy to 
press CTRL+T several times and arrive to a memory limit.
- Second, I experience this when using virtualbox, given that the vm was asking 
half of the memory available, as soon as I open a couple of tabs in chrome in 
the host the system started to be unusable.
- Third, to reproduce it easily I've installed memtester application and run a 
couple of instances of it asking 2G chunks, this effectively reproduce the 
crash very effectively.

Tell me if I should add any other log to help diagnose the issue.
Hope this helps.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: linux-image-3.13.0-65-generic 3.13.0-65.106
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-65.106-generic 3.13.11-ckt26
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-65-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.15
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0:  yas        3625 F.... pulseaudio
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sun Oct 11 10:41:41 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-01-17 (266 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
MachineType: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. 900X3C/900X3D/900X3E/900X4C/900X4D
ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-65-generic.efi.signed 
root=UUID=c5d1dcf0-367e-4643-99f9-735befcdaba1 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-3.13.0-65-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-3.13.0-65-generic  N/A
 linux-firmware                             1.127.15
SourcePackage: linux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 07/15/2015
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
dmi.bios.version: P11ABK
dmi.board.asset.tag: Base Board Asset Tag
dmi.board.name: NP900X3E-A01ES
dmi.board.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
dmi.board.version: FAB1
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 9
dmi.chassis.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
dmi.chassis.version: 0.1
dmi.modalias: 
dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologiesLtd.:bvrP11ABK:bd07/15/2015:svnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:pn900X3C/900X3D/900X3E/900X4C/900X4D:pvr0.1:rvnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:rnNP900X3E-A01ES:rvrFAB1:cvnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:ct9:cvr0.1:
dmi.product.name: 900X3C/900X3D/900X3E/900X4C/900X4D
dmi.product.version: 0.1
dmi.sys.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.

** Affects: linux (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug trusty

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1504914

Title:
  System freeze/restart on high memory usage

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