Subject: Re: kern/14721: It's possible to crash the system by opening a large
To: David Laight <David.Laight@btinternet.com>
From: Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@netbsd.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 11/25/2001 21:22:19
David Laight wrote:
> > Beyond this, we should at least document somewhere that setting a 
> > kern.* or ulimit maximum does not actually garantee that the 
> > resource will be available when we will request it.
> 
> Nothing (I recall) in the X/Open spec stops open() (or t_open() or socket()
> - which I've discussed at XNET meetings) from failing due to 'transient
> lack of resource'.

Right, kern.maxfiles is only _limit_ of maximum open files, it
does not guarantee you'd be able to open that many files. If you
need that many, you'd need to get appropriate hw resources
for that.

Obviously, it's broken when kernel panics when the hw resources
are depleted, it should fail in normal way (i.e., just returning
error to the application).

Jaromir
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org> http://www.NetBSD.org/Ports/i386/ps2.html
-=  Those who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserve  =-
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