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Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:44:08 -0500
From: Nathan Vidican <webmaster@wmptl.com>
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To: Richard B Mahoney <rbm49@it.canterbury.ac.nz>
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Restricting a users CPU usage -- Possible?
References: <20001123144644.B42752@student.canterbury.ac.nz>
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"Richard B. Mahoney" wrote:
> 
> Dear Readers,
> 
> I know its possible to restrict user disk storage quotas under FreeBSD
> but what about a user's CPU usage? I've searched for info on this and
> have come up empty handed. The reason I ask is as follows.
> 
> This is the system:
> 
> FreeBSD student.canterbury.ac.nz 4.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE #0:
> Thu Jul 20 13:20:28 NZST 2000
> root@172.31.45.238:/usr/src/sys/compile/MUGGINS  i386
> 
> It's an elderly Digital Venturis 5133 with 40Meg RAM.
> 
> This is the problem:
> 
> I spend most of my time in Emacs writing papers with AucTeX and
> teTeX. They have lots of footnotes & I am always reformating
> paragraphs and so on.
> 
> On occaision, if the formating is particularly tricky, Emacs starts
> chewing up memory. It can blow out from its usual 8Meg or so to over
> 30Meg. The trouble is that once it reaches these levels it just stays
> there and never returns to its original level. The only way to peg it
> back is to kill it and startup all over again. The other problem is
> that when its formating it almost completely takes over the processor
> and other programmes become unresponsive.
> 
> The other day Emacs kept climbing in this way and exceeded the
> available swap space. The system promptly stepped in and killed it by
> itself! I was in many ways delighted. Under any other system and a
> reboot would have been needed.
> 
> Nonetheless, what I would like to do is to restrict the amount of CPU
> that emacs has access to. In this way, if it decides to become a rogue
> programme I can simply Ctl-Alt-F2 out of Blackbox, then log in as
> root, and have sufficient CPU available to quickly put a stop to it.
> 
> Any assistance would be appreciated.
> 
> Regards,
> 
>  Richard Mahoney
> 
> 
> --
> ======================================================================
> Richard Mahoney            /^^^\             Telephone: +64-3-351-5831
> 78 Jeffreys Rd           (| , , |)
> Christchurch              |  *  |
> NEW ZEALAND                \_-_/     mailto:rbm49@csc.canterbury.ac.nz
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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try using 'nice' for the CPU usage, but seems you have a ram issue here.

-- 
Nathan Vidican
webmaster@wmptl.com
Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd.
http://www.wmptl.com/


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