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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: VM problems w/unlimited memory?
Message-ID: <1993Mar15.220646.9854@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
References: <C3qpIH.Is9@unx.sas.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 22:06:46 GMT
Lines: 47
In article <C3qpIH.Is9@unx.sas.com> sastdr@torpid.unx.sas.com (Thomas David Rivers) writes:
> I was following the thread about compiling large arrays and the
>memory limits; so I thought I would try out something.
>
> Since I use the sh (actually bash) there is no limit command; so
>I thought to myself - I'll just run csh; reset the limit and crank
>up a sh...
>
> Ok, Here's the result:
>% limit
[...]
>openfiles unlimited
^^^^^^^^^
>% sh
>
> < Reboot... no panic or nothin'>
>
>I was doing this on an 8-meg, 386SX w/ 30 megs of swap space, using a
>kernel patched up to 83 (not 84-110.) My fstab looks like:
This is obviously a problem in the open code. bash is stupid and doesn't
just ask the system how many files it can open and assume all the ones
that are supposed to be are closed; this results in overruning the process
file table in the kernel, triggering a kernel bug.
The correct fix is to force the open code to obey the per-process limit on
open files and the system open file limit, both of which are kernel build
time constants (the second being predicated on the number of users the
system supposedly supports).
Bash would start up faster if it were fixed, but even if it isn't, it
should not result in a crash, so it's a kernel problem. Whether or not
bash is slow on startup when the number is arbitrarily large is a problem
for the bash people.
Terry Lambert
terry@icarus.weber.edu
terry_lambert@novell.com
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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