Re: Simple DoS...out of resources?

Oliver Xymoron (oxymoron@waste.org)
Mon, 8 Mar 1999 15:19:55 -0600 (CST)


On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, rewt wrote:

> It is very easy to crash a system simply by viewing a large file with
> editor such as pico. It will eat up all the resources and do some
> unpredictible things. In my case I viewed a 100mb file as it was reading
> it, it filled up all the swap space which is 48mb. It killed most of the
> processes including sendmail, sshd, X, syslog. Does anyone have any idea
> how can i protect myself against that kind of DoS? My configuration:
> P100, 48mb ram, 48mb swap running on kernel 2.2.2.

Use rlimit or ulimit - see the man page for your shell. Alternately, use
the limits module from the PAM suite (simplest way with Redhat).

If you're a system administrator on a multi-user system where this is
important, you had better start studying up. If you don't know this, there
is _a lot_ more you don't know that you should.

--
 "Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.." 

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