Bug: RAM maxed out overnight?

[lilFonsi15]

Is this urgent?

No

Host OS

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

CPU arch

x86_64

VPN service provider

NordVPN

What are you using to run the container

docker-compose

What is the version of Gluetun

Running version v3.41.1 built on 2026-02-11T14:22:29.184Z (commit 7f22fb3)

What's the problem 🤔

Help diagnosing why the Gluetun container max's out the RAM 10GB overnight?

Share your logs (at least 10 lines)

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [routing] default route found: interface eth0, gateway 172.26.0.1, assigned IP 172.26.0.2 and family v4

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [routing] adding route for 0.0.0.0/0

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [firewall] setting allowed subnets...

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [routing] default route found: interface eth0, gateway 172.26.0.1, assigned IP 172.26.0.2 and family v4

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [dns] using plaintext DNS at address 1.1.1.1

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [healthcheck] listening on 127.0.0.1:9999

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [http server] http server listening on [::]:8000

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [firewall] allowing VPN connection...

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [wireguard] Using available kernelspace implementation

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [wireguard] Connecting to 146.70.75.163:51820

2026-05-25T13:58:40Z INFO [wireguard] Wireguard setup is complete. Note Wireguard is a silent protocol and it may or may not work, without giving any error message. Typically i/o timeout errors indicate the Wireguard connection is not working.

2026-05-25T13:58:46Z INFO [dns] downloading hostnames and IP block lists

2026-05-25T13:58:50Z INFO [dns] DNS server listening on [::]:53

2026-05-25T13:58:52Z INFO [dns] ready

2026-05-25T13:58:56Z INFO [ip getter] Public IP address is 185.193.64.146 (Canada, Quebec, Montréal - source: ipinfo+ifconfig.co+ip2location+cloudflare)

2026-05-25T13:58:57Z INFO [vpn] You are running the latest release v3.41.1

2026-05-25T15:09:44Z WARN [healthcheck] ignoring ICMP echo reply mismatching expected sequence number 78 (id: 23422, seq: 73, type: 0, code: 0, length: 40, return address 1.1.1.1)

2026-05-26T03:07:34Z WARN [healthcheck] ignoring ICMP echo reply mismatching expected sequence number 825 (id: 23422, seq: 821, type: 0, code: 0, length: 40, return address 1.1.1.1)

Share your configuration

services:
  gluetun:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun:v3.41.1
    container_name: gluetun
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    devices:
      - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
    ports:
      #- 8888:8888/tcp # HTTP proxy
      #- 8388:8388/tcp # Shadowsocks
      #- 8388:8388/udp # Shadowsocks
      - 8080:8080
    volumes:
      - /home/lilfonsi/Documents/Docker/appdata/gluetun:/gluetun
    environment:
      # See https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/tree/main/setup#setup
      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=nordvpn
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard
      # OpenVPN:
      #- OPENVPN_USER=***
      #- OPENVPN_PASSWORD=***
      # Wireguard:
      - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=***
      - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=10.64.222.21/32
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - UPDATER_PERIOD=48h
      - UPDATER_VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDERS=
      - SERVER_CITIES=Montreal,Toronto
      - SERVER_CATEGORIES=P2P
      - BORINGPOLL_GLUETUNCOM=on
    restart: unless-stopped

[github-actions]

@qdm12 is more or less the only maintainer of this project and works on it in his free time.
Please:

• do not ask for updates, be patient
• 👍 the issue to show your support instead of commenting
  @qdm12 usually checks issues at least once a week, if this is a new urgent bug,
  revert to an older tagged container image

[qdm12]

can you reproduce? any other information? how do you know it's gluetun that was using all the ram? did it get OOM killed?

[lilFonsi15]

Hi! Thank you for the quick reply, it happens to my setup every morning, I logged the RAM usage for Gluetun and it gradually goes up starting around 2 am, I do see a OOM for qemu-system-x86 process. there is only one container using Gluetun as a "network_mode: "container:gluetun". I have a total ram of 32GB with 10GB of that for Docker Desktop.

Any hints on where I can check on what happening around that time, loose the logs when i restart docker desktop.

[gluetun_memory_monitor.log](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/28315933/gluetun_memory_monitor.log

[articiceberg97]

+1 to this because I'm having the same issue on 3.40.0 also at 2am. Breaks my entire docker network until I restart the engine.
Linux mint 22.2, docker 4.75.0

[qdm12]

@lilFonsi15 try the latest image ? There's been quite a few fixes the last 2 month, maybe the latest v3.41 bugfix doesn't have all of them.
If you still have the problem, follow these steps when you see it's starting to bubble in memory (for example using 1GB of ram) : https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/contributing/profiling.md and share what you get from that. Try also disabling the periodic updater with UPDATER_PERIOD=0 to see if it makes a difference ?

@articiceberg97 v3.40 is very old, at least try v3.41.