From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200306050320.h553KG516675@augusta.math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: some #s
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 04 Jun 2003 19:24:54 CDT."
             <3EDE8DD6.6060101@ameritech.net>
From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
Date: Wed,  4 Jun 2003 23:20:16 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: c4b0384c-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> >Memory leakage, if all the memory isn't written to a known state then in
> >some environments a serious security risk may be opened. Swap is another
> >well known example.
>
> Rebooting doesn't eradicate that vulnerability. It only obfuscates its
> scope.

Most problems that run in massively parallel configurations (as on
`grid' style machines) don't swap; each individual job is sized to run
in the available memory of the processor it's running on.  Swapping is
just too slow.

I have no idea what Choate means by ``memory leakage.''  Most sytems
have well defined semantics for returning memory to a ``known state''
after a process exits, and it's reasonable to assume that `jobs' come
in units of processes.  Perhaps there are some that don't, but
considering that we're talking about Plan 9 here, that doesn't seem
relevant.

	- Dan C.