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SubjectRe: Out Of Memory in v. 2.1
On Wed, 07 Oct 1998, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:

> Once you have allowed a user process to eat all memory in the first
> place, you have *already* lost the game unless you have a kernel
> mechanism for killing large processes.

I don't think it's the kernel's job to be monitoring userspace processes
for excessive resource use. Adding in some big brother functionality like
this to the kernel is encouraging lazy systems administration.
If the administrator does not prevent users from DoS'ing the system like
this, it's their problem. 'man ulimit' isn't too difficult a read.
The only tricky situation I can see is if there is a root process that goes
whacko and takes control. On one hand there is the need for control to be
regained, but on the other hand I for one sure wouldn't want the ability
for superuser processes to be arbitrarily ceased execution by some
automatic service I have no control over. On the third hand, who has the
right to tell the superuser what they can and can't run, and when?
Taking away this responsibility and power is the road to the dark side.
There's already too many operating systems in major use today that take the
assumption that the computer is smarter than the person using it. No
matter how right that assumption sometimes is, it shouldn't be done. It
makes the computer a reliance or a necessity rather than a tool doing a
job. It certainly doesn't make the user any smarter.

So to put it simply, if ulimit doesn't do enough process management for
you, take a look at some of the tools on sunsite that address this issue.
Or write your own. This is a user-space, administration issue and not
something that belongs in the kernel.

--
Matt

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