From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Sep 21 16:23:38 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from luna.lyris.net (luna.shelby.com [207.90.155.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 80CA614DEB for ; Tue, 21 Sep 1999 16:23:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kip@lyris.com) Received: from luna.shelby.com by luna.lyris.net (8.9.1b+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id QAA17884; Tue, 21 Sep 1999 16:23:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (luna.shelby.com [207.90.155.6]) by luna.shelby.com with SMTP (MailShield v1.50); Tue, 21 Sep 1999 16:23:19 -0700 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 16:23:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Kip Macy X-Sender: kip@luna To: Gregory Sutter Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: kern.maxfiles and kern.maxfilesperproc In-Reply-To: <19990921161540.D49731@forty-two.egroups.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-SMTP-HELO: luna X-SMTP-MAIL-FROM: kip@lyris.com X-SMTP-RCPT-TO: gsutter@pobox.com,stable@freebsd.org X-SMTP-PEER-INFO: luna.shelby.com [207.90.155.6] Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Thanks. Although having maxfiles == maxfilesperproc might make sense for special cases e.g. a machine completely dedicated to one process -- It is dangerous at best for the general case. Any malicious program can make a machine running FreeBSD non-functional. The default should be set with the average user in mind, namely protecting him from himself. -Kip On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Gregory Sutter wrote: > On Sun, Sep 19, 1999 at 03:16:40PM -0700, Kip Macy wrote: > > Is kern.maxfiles the total number of files that can be open on the system > > at one time? If so it seems very silly that by default it is the same > > number as kern.maxfilesperproc -- meaning that any process can use up the > > total number of files available to the system. > > I asked -hackers the exact same question a month or so ago, and > received the same answer -- "use login.conf". I didn't like the > answer, because I think that no single process should ever have > control of all possible open files, and login.conf is not a > sensible place for changing a bad default behavior. There should > always be some left over for other processes, so that vital > activities like logging and root logins can occur. > > The subject was dropped and I modified my boxes so that > kern.maxfiles > kern.maxfilesperproc. > > Greg > -- > Gregory S. Sutter Heisenberg might have been here. > mailto:gsutter@pobox.com > http://www.pobox.com/~gsutter/ > PGP DSS public key 0x40AE3052 > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message