Runaway Process

Definitions

1. A process that consumes excessive CPU, memory, disk, or other resources because it is stuck, looping, leaking, or otherwise behaving uncontrollably. In operations work, runaway processes are a common source of degraded hosts and emergency kills.

   In plain English: A program that starts using system resources out of control.

   Example: "The node went unresponsive because a runaway process ate all the memory and triggered the OOM killer."

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