Gunicorn workers killed by OOM causing Bad Gateway errors

critical

Resource ContentionUpdated Aug 23, 2025(via Exa)

Sources

Django Troubleshooting Guide - Fixing Production Disasters at 3 AMtoolstac.com

Technologies:

Djangosubject

GunicornThe root cause of this issue originates in Gunicorn

How to detect:

Django app returns 'Bad Gateway' errors due to Gunicorn workers being killed by the kernel's OOM killer from memory exhaustion. Check dmesg for 'killed process' messages indicating OOMKilled processes.

Recommended action:

Check dmesg with `dmesg | grep -i "killed process"` to confirm OOM kills. Monitor memory with htop. Set memory limits in systemd service configuration. Reduce number of Gunicorn workers or increase server RAM. Calculate workers as: (2 × CPU cores) + 1.