Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 17:07:31 -0500 From: D J Hawkey Jr <hawkeyd@visi.com> To: steve@nomad.tor.lets.net, freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: when mail full /tmp partition, system cracked Message-ID: <20010906170731.A18984@sheol.localdomain>
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In article <20010906152832.A44174_nomad.lets.net@ns.sol.net>,
steve@nomad.tor.lets.net writes:
> On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 10:45:47AM -0300, Fernando Schapachnik wrote:
>> En un mensaje anterior, edwin chan escribi<F3>:
>> > we found the messages in log:
>> >
>> > Sep 5 21:00:33 www /kernel: swap_pager: out of swap space
>> > Sep 5 21:00:33 www /kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace: failed
>>
>> What might have happened is that a the great amount of email forked a
>> great amount of processes which in turn ate all available memory and
>> swap. Your machine ran out of swap. Either increase it (look at the
>> FAQ & handbook for instructions) or add more memory. Or impose
>> resource limits (can do it via login.conf and/or sendmail.cf
>> -MaxDaemonChildren, RefuseLA, etc.-).
>
> What is supposed to happen is the largest process is supposed
> to be killed if virtual memory is exhausted. There is a bug in
> 4.3-RELEASE that prevents this from happening. The kernel hangs
> before any processes get killed.
Is "the largest process" selective, to some degree or another? That is,
will it (can it?) discern a "more valuable" process from a "lesser one"?
Can it be told to kill off the last process started, as opposed to the
largest? I myself would find this preferable in many cases.
> It has fixed in STABLE.
No patch for the RELENG_4_3 tree in store, I take it? I browsed the CVS
tree; is the fix contained entirely in vm_map.c?
> -steve
Dave
--
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