RE: KPATCH] Reserve VM for root (was: Re: Looking for better VM)

[Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka@f-secure.com>]

On Wed, 1 Jan 1997 pavel-velo@bug.ucw.cz wrote:

>    >main() { while(1) if (fork()) malloc(1); }
>    >With the patch below I could ssh to the host and killall the offending
>    >processes. To enable reserving VM space for root do
> what about main() { while(1) system("ftp localhost &"); }
> This. or so,ething similar should allow you to kill your machine
> even with your patch from normal user account

This or something similar didn't kill the box [I've tried all local
DoS from Packetstorm that I could find]. Please send a working
example. Of course probably it's possible to trigger root owned
processes to eat memory eagerly by user apps but that's a problem in
the process design running as root and not a kernel issue.

Note, I'm not discussing "local user can kill the box without limits",
I say Linux "deadlocks" [it starts its own autonom life and usually
your only chance is to hit the reset button] when there is continuous
VM pressure by user applications. If you think fork() kills the box
then ulimit the maximum number of user processes (ulimit -u). This is
a different issue and a bad design in the scheduler (see e.g. Tru64
for a better one).

BTW, I have a new version of the patch with that Linux behaves much
better from root's point of view when the memory is more significantly
overcommited. I'll post it if I have time [and there is interest].

	Szaka

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