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Date:      Fri, 19 Dec 1997 18:18:49 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Scot Elliott <scot@poptart.org>
To:        Ian Freislich <iang@digs.iafrica.com>
Cc:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: fsck problem at boot time
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.971219175128.8751A-100000@homer.duff-beer.com>
In-Reply-To: <E0xj07w-0000Vv-00@brane.digs.iafrica.com>

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On Fri, 19 Dec 1997, Ian Freislich wrote:

> This problem relates to the resources allowed to the boot process,
> run as user daemon - as I'm led to believe. Fscking a 16Gb disk
> requires more memory than the kernel is willing to give to fsck.
> The entry in /etc/login.conf for daemon hints that the limits set
> here are used for rc. Changing the limits here, running cap_mkdb
> and rebooting proved otherwise.

The 2.2.2 system I recently installed didn't have a default login.conf -
and everything works fine.  I see that my new /usr/src/etc which I've
since CVSupped, has one with these dodgy default settings in it.  It does
say at the top of the file that it's an *example*...  and I rather think
that it's bad news to use this without altering it yfour your own use
first.

I personally dislike the practice of setting CPU limits for users.  There
really seems very little point in putting a hard limit of CPU time on a
process.

This is especialy true for root and daemon - which are used to run system
daemons which persist for the whole uptime of the machine.  Any server
that actually does anything would eventually be killed if it had a hard
CPU limit set. 

Similarly, for login users, there seems very little point because any job
which takes that much CPU time can just be split into multiple jobs taking
less CPU time - hense using the same total resources and just
inconvieniencing the user.

It would make more sense to limit CPU resources as a percentage per
day or hour.   For instance, allocate daemon 25% CPU resources if you only
want your server proceses to use a quarter of the machine's CPU.  But then
you have a problem of what to do when that limit's reached.

To be honest Id suggest just staying away from limiting system users.  It
seems a whole lot simpler just to let them get on with what they do with
no interference. 


Scot Elliott

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