From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 27 09:15:54 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA22673 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 27 May 1996 09:15:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA22639 for ; Mon, 27 May 1996 09:15:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id SAA24106; Mon, 27 May 1996 18:15:20 +0200 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id SAA29977; Mon, 27 May 1996 18:15:20 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.5/8.6.9) id SAA00854; Mon, 27 May 1996 18:03:33 +0200 (MET DST) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199605271603.SAA00854@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: CHILD_MAX To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 18:03:30 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: mmead@Glock.COM (matthew c. mead) Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199605271522.LAA05548@Glock.COM> from "matthew c. mead" at "May 27, 96 11:22:31 am" X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL17 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As matthew c. mead wrote: > Does anyone know why CHILD_MAX for the kernel and CHILD_MAX > in the /usr/include/sys/syslimits.h are different (128 and 40 > respectively)? I'm running into the problem of having too few > processes available. If I redefine the define in syslimits.h to > 128 will I be able to run right away, or am I correct in > presuming that I'm going to have to rebuild things? What all > will I have to rebuild? The correct way is options "CHILD_MAX=128" and rebuild the kernel. I've once got the idea to make this limit dynamic, depending on the size of the machine (amount of physical memory, speed of CPU), since it's mostly there to prevent denial of resource attacks (like the ``fork trap''). The current static limit doesn't fullfill this, it's too high for a 386/16 w/ 4 MB RAM, and far too low for wcarchive. Nobody (including me) ever got round to implement this however. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)