ulimit (was: getty/login for callback)
Guy Harris
guy at auspex.auspex.com
Wed Apr 26 04:10:32 AEST 1989
>In the context of a corporation, a full file system is more that an
>inconvenience. It cost BIG bucks!!! Every time a system hangs because
>someone filled up a file system or 20-30 users can't work for several
>minutes while someone figures out the problem or a temporary space
>problem causes corruption of a product being prepaired for system
>testing, the company loses MONEY!!!
Right. And has been pointed out many times - although "ulimit"s
defenders seem not to see those messages - "ulimit" doesn't prevent
this. It prevents *certain* situations from causing the file system to
fill up; most of the situations I've seen where a file system filled up
weren't caused by some program illegitimately running off at the mouth,
though, they were caused by a program *legitimately* writing a large
file, or, more often, by slow accretion of a bunch of *small* files.
The corporation also loses "MONEY!!!" when somebody's trying to process
a file that's larger than the ulimit, and the system won't let them....
>It is not difficult at all for the administrator to set a higher
>ulimit for users that have a legitimate need, ESPECIALLY is you have
>source to the login program.
Oh, good grief. Are there really that many people out there aware that
many, many sites do *not* have source to the login program? By this
logic, "/etc/inittab" isn't really necessary; after all, it would not be
difficult at all for the administrator to modify a compiled-in table....
>If you had ever been an administrator in a software development
>environment you would see the demonstrated need for the ulimit.
This statement is false. I've administered systems in this environment, and
I see no such need.
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