Re: Is it possible to give the user the option to cancel forkbombs?

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 22:45 -0800, Dane Mutters wrote:
> I thought you might find this helpful.  (I brought this issue up with
> the Slackware folks once, and they told me basically this.)
> 
> http://wiki.craz1.homelinux.com/index.php/Linux:Security:Forkbomb
> 
> I was also told that the ability to spawn such rampant forks/processes
> is controlled by default in Debian.  Is this the case?
> 
> Here is an LQ thread where I brought it up:
> 
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-security-4/how-can-i-prevent-forkbombs-338560/
> 
> I would like to see something done about this, with Ubuntu as popular as
> it is, even as a server in some cases.  Is there a way that in the
> future, one could simply download a package or click a box or something
> and have a limit set, like the links suggest?  That would make things
> just "that much" more convenient for system administrators (and might
> help them/us to remember to set these limits, too...).

If you don't know which limits to set and need a package for them, your
job title should not be system administrator.