Re: [9fans] protection against resource exhaustion

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> > i think it will go the same way with fork protection.  how do you tell which program
> > is at fault?  how do you tell a program forking at high frequency, with short lived
> > children from a fork bomb?  (such as a busy web server.)
>
> only system administrator knows which processes should keep running.

do you wake him up in the middle of the night if this happens to arbitrate?
this knowledge of what should be preserved may only be post facto knowledge.
"i'll know what to kill off once i see what's running."  which assumes a working
fork, at least for the administrator.

in any event, i'd be interested in code that does do a good job, especially
if it passes tests other than the trivial fork bomb, such as many users contributing
to exhaustion.

> I have beeb writing codes believing those error return is working.

do you have tests?  did you write a test malloc that will fail when called
at every location, and ensure sane behavior?

- erik