Process Deluge on Linux

Question

I tried this experiment on my Linux desktop:

int main()
{
  while(1)
    fork();
  return 0;
}

I ran this program as normal user(not root), i was surprised to find that it brought down my system, it has become unresponsive. I had hoped that due to resource limit exhaustion my process would have been killed,but apparently this is not the case. Any ideas why?

thanks, Sid.

PS: this was my office Linux box on which i was experimenting from home, i hope everything will be okay when i restart it tomorrow ....

Answer 1

You've re-invented a fork bomb.

I think most Linux distributions don't set per-user resource limits by default. You can configure them of course, but you probably haven't.

The machine will be fine after a reboot - unless the CPU usage has caused over-heating problems.

To prevent an ordinary user from spawning too many processes you need to add configuration to /etc/security/limits.conf

You can use ulimit to set limits that would apply to your current session if you think you're going to run a program that might start too many processes or use up too much of other resources.

Answer 2

you can find stuffs about that on wikipedia.

Answer 3

Most likely, your system administrator didn't set up the user limits. If no user limits are set, then they can't protect anyone.