On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 14:51, Dave Jones wrote: > On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 02:24:56PM -0500, Scot L. Harris wrote: > > > This is the wrong approach. A user level account should not be allowed > > to consume resources to the point that the whole system crashes. > > man ulimit > sysadmins are responsible for setting these limits as they are per-site > values that make no sense globally. > This is a complete non-issue, that gets blown out of all proportion > every single time it comes up. Usually at the beginning of each academic year. I was responding to Mathew Miller who suggested finding the user that issued the fork bomb and slap them around. And yes there are tools available to help mitigate the potential problem as you pointed out. But why not set a default limit instead of leaving it open? Kind of like saying it is the admins responsibility to disable open relaying of sendmail instead of having the default configuration setup to deny relaying. By default fewer people create open relays, it does take a little effort to correctly setup sendmail for a new admin but safer for everyone else. Set some default limit for maximum number of processes for users that satisfies 90% of the users out there. The other 10% get to learn how to up those numbers or disable the limit if needed. Once done this would be a non-issue from then on. -- Scot L. Harris webid@xxxxxxxxxx Your EMAIL is now being delivered by the USPS.
