From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 19 20:13:53 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62CAA1065670 for ; Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:13:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rick@kiwi-computer.com) Received: from hamlet.setfilepointer.com (hamlet.SetFilePointer.com [63.224.10.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0EC188FC0A for ; Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:13:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 95424 invoked from network); 19 Jan 2010 14:13:51 -0600 Received: from keira.kiwi-computer.com (HELO kiwi-computer.com) (63.224.10.3) by hamlet.setfilepointer.com with SMTP; 19 Jan 2010 14:13:51 -0600 Received: (qmail 76593 invoked by uid 2001); 19 Jan 2010 20:13:51 -0000 Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:13:51 -0600 From: "Rick C. Petty" To: Doug Barton Message-ID: <20100119201351.GA76360@keira.kiwi-computer.com> References: <201001181929.o0IJT5IZ001218@lurza.secnetix.de> <4B54C3C7.5040904@FreeBSD.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4B54C3C7.5040904@FreeBSD.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jhs@berklix.com, Oliver Fromme Subject: Re: limits for run away Firefox ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: rick-freebsd2009@kiwi-computer.com List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:13:53 -0000 On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 12:25:43PM -0800, Doug Barton wrote: > On 01/18/10 11:29, Oliver Fromme wrote: > > Doug Barton wrote: > > > On 01/17/10 17:07, Julian H. Stacey wrote: > > > > Hi hackers > > > > I'm tired of my X server occasionaly freezing, swap thrasing, & firefox dumps: > > > > 4,346,937,344 ~/firefox-bin.core > > > > so as a temporary cludge I ran > > > > touch ~/firefox-bin.core ; chmod 000 ~/firefox-bin.core > > > > > > Sorry I don't have a solution to your actual problem, but a better way > > > to deal with this is to do: ln -s /dev/null ~/firefox-bin.core > > > > I think not generating a core dump at all is better than > > writing 4 GB to /dev/null. > > A) The method I proposed is useful for other things too, and as you > pointed out it can sometimes be difficult to track down all the ways a > given thing is started. What about just adding the limit command to the /usr/local/bin/firefox script? That would guarantee any instantiation of firefox wouldn't dump core. > B) If we're going to be snarky, it would be far better if it didn't need > to dump core in the first place. :) I don't think that Oliver was at all snarky. He was merely suggesting a solution which would prevent the core file from being generated at all; the OP was tired of the extra time spent and Oliver's suggestion would certainly reduce this time. The symlink seems to hackish to me, although I've had to use it often in other situations. And in some cases the culprit would unlink(2) it first, so I've had to "chflags noschg" it, which works better than "chmod 000" (if the FS supports it). But I agree that it would be nice to prevent ffox from segfaulting; unfortunately this is one of those apps which segfaults a lot (for me at least). =) Cheers, -- Rick C. Petty