> does anyone have patches that would set limits on the number
> of processes a user can have.
> > >
> > > Both hit the process limit pretty quickly, but the shell script
> > > version kills the machine pretty much dead.
> > >
> > > No-one else can log in, Control-c doesn't work, and when I try
> > > Ctrl-Alt-Delete, the system takes about five minutes to get to
> > > "Shutting down gpm services: ", and does nothing after that.
> > > (Well, I waited 15 minutes, and gave up and hit the reset button.)
> > >
> > > It seems to me that this may be something to do with the fact that
> > > the processes are respawning faster than init can kill them.
> > >
> > > Perhaps init should be modified to send the a SIGSTOP before
> > > SIGTERM/SIGKILL. This would (might?) solve this problem.
You might want to use lshell instead, it makes the process of
limiting resources more dynamic (you don't have to recompile
your kernel each time you aren't satisfied with the limits) and
it seems to work for me. You can get lshell from sunsite.unc.edu
/pub/Linux/system/admin/login/lshell-2.01.tar.gz
-- Samuli Kaski, samkaski@cs.Helsinki.FI Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Finland.