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Date:      Thu, 9 Nov 2000 11:50:23 -0800
From:      Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: The shared /bin and /sbin bikeshed
Message-ID:  <20001109115022.Y5112@fw.wintelcom.net>
In-Reply-To: <200011091944.eA9JiSN30771@vashon.polstra.com>; from jdp@polstra.com on Thu, Nov 09, 2000 at 11:44:28AM -0800
References:  <200011091223.eA9CNQW26294@mobile.wemm.org> <200011091909.eA9J9wM10639@earth.backplane.com> <20001109112328.T5112@fw.wintelcom.net> <200011091944.eA9JiSN30771@vashon.polstra.com>

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* John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> [001109 11:44] wrote:
> In article <20001109112328.T5112@fw.wintelcom.net>, Alfred Perlstein
> <bright@wintelcom.net> wrote:
> 
> > root on a Linux box is unable to do squat when the machine is almost
> > out of memory because he can't map in /lib/libc.so to run 'ps' or
> > even another copy of bash.
> 
> I don't understand this statement.  If there is even a single
> dynamically linked application running, libc.so will already be in
> memory, and that image will be shared by whatever you're trying to
> run, e.g., "ps".  True, only the text will be shared -- the data and
> bss will still require additional memory.  However, the situation is
> even worse with a statically linked "ps".  Assuming (reasonably) that
> there is no "ps" already running, the entire image will be unshared.
> In other words, it should take less memory to run the shared version
> than the statically linked version.

A lot of things in Linux defy explanation, all I know is what I
saw, which was root being unable to run 'ps' or 'kill' and the
error was that there wasn't enough free memory to map in libc.so.

The really strange part was that root was able to log in, but 
yet unable to do anything else.

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."


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