At 04:00 PM 12/8/98 -0600, Michel Pelletier wrote:
Yes, I can understand the paranoia though.
import os while 1: os.fork()
A trivial fork bomb, but there are a million others. Please don't mistake my comment as a request to start a discussion on hack techniques.
FWIW, the code above won't work (for long) on a Hiway/RapidSite server. The system watchdog processes will kill off every process associated with your user ID long before you reach a number of processes that would make the box hiccup. One of the reasons I've been interested in LRP architectures and programming environments (like ZOPE) which encourage their use, is that memory usage is one of the main bottlenecks in loading up servers with webhosting accounts that have any kind of applications running. Fewer processes = less VM overhead = more customers/box = less capital and overhead costs = more profit. That's the theory, anyway. The practice of actually getting there is fraught with such things as the need for processes to die off when not in use, fair-share CPU slicing, and so on. Ugh.