Re: [PATCH] Patch to Memory Subsystem ... (Needed?)

Brian Schau (bsc@fleggaard.dk)
Fri, 06 Nov 1998 20:30:15 +0100

Meelis Roos wrote:
>
> BS> Now set the no. of freepages to say, 1024 (4 Mb on Intel-platforms) and
> BS> run 'eat' again as normal user. Watch the amount of free memory. It
> BS> should drop down to ~ 4Mb - not below! You're then able to login as
> BS> root and do your stuff ... ;o)
>
> What if during the change there was less free pages than 1024?
> (Sorry, too lazy to check the code)
>
> --
> Meelis Roos (mroos@tartu.cyber.ee)

Then your *users* are in trouble - as I wrote later in the mail ;o)
There's no check to see if 'rootpages' contains some strange or high
value.
But 'rootpages' doesn't affect UID 0 operations. Root *can* eat all
memory if (s)he likes ...

OTOH, rootpages is meant to be set during initialization of the system
(like after /proc is mounted) ...........

Kind regards,

Brian

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