Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 06:47:26 -0500 (CDT) From: Alec Kloss <alec@d2si.com> To: sramkris@ichips.intel.com (Sri Ramkrishna) Cc: taco@mad.scientist.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: wierd problem with forking. Message-ID: <199710101147.GAA01416@d2si.com> In-Reply-To: <199710092336.QAA17736@ichips.intel.com> from Sri Ramkrishna at "Oct 9, 97 04:36:33 pm"
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Sri Ramkrishna said:
> In message <343D6899.3F54BC7E@mad.scientist.com> you write:
> > Each user is only allowed to have so many processes running at a time.
> > This is just an idea but if you fork bomb your computer you will see it
> > happen. :)
>
> Well the thing that kills me I have only 5 bash shells, X windows, PPP
> and netscape running. Surely there are enough processes for doing
> just that in the GENERIC kernel. And if I quit Netscape, applications
> can fork again. But it doesn't explain why a program I wrote that
> forks works when applications like man are failing. (unless they are
> forking more times than my program does)
>
> sri
>
>
On this system (Freebsd 2.2.1) opening a man page starts 4 processes.
>From what you're describing, it sounds like you've got at least 11
processes running (each terminal window is one, each shell is one, and
Netscape). Also, watch out for the limit on descriptors---it's often
as limiting as the limit on processes.
By default it seems that FreeBSD is not exactly configured for heavy X usage.
I've set my limits to
cputime unlimited
filesize unlimited
datasize 64MB
stacksize 8MB
coredumpsize unlimited
memoryuse 120MB
memorylocked 40MB
maxproc 128
descriptors 128
and haven't had to many problems. You'll almost certainly want to
adjust your maxusers kerner parameter. I've beefed mine up to 90---we
have as many as four X servers managed by the machine at a time
without any noticable problems.
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