Re: Very large font size crashing X Font Server and Grounding Server to a Halt

[Bernd Eckenfels]

In article <[e-mail]> you wrote:
> It has always puzzled me that a process using lots of memory can bring 
> down an entire (otherwise relatively idle) server to the extent that one 
> cannot even get mingetty on a local terminal to respond to keypresses. I 
> can confirm that the described situation is not just a one-off.

Well, with crrent versions you have to have 2 or 3 of them to realy make a
server trtash. Something like:

tail /dev/zero 

recovers with the oom killer

tail /dev/zero & tail /dev/zero & tail /dev/zero

will most likely trash for minutes.

Some kind of penalty could be introduced, because this is better to set up
than ulimit. On a system with large amounts of users you simply cant set the
ulimit of a single user to mainram/concurrent-users or
mainram/concurrent-evil-users.

Greetings
Bernd