Fork bombing a Linux machine as a non-root user

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 13:24, Scot L. Harris wrote:
> > If you want to prevent this from happening accidentally, or if you have a
> > critical server with users you don't trust (a situation to be avoided!) you
> > can _reduce_ the chances of something like this happening by configuring
> > resource limits, but since all computers do have finite resources, it's hard
> > to have a generally-useful shared machine without some possibility of
> > someone going out of their way to use more than their share.
> 
> This is the wrong approach.  A user level account should not be allowed
> to consume resources to the point that the whole system crashes.

I'd venture a guess that a large percentage of Linux boxes are in fact
used by a single user who does want to be able to use the entire set of
resources available. And a large percentage of the ones with multiple
users have a system administrator that knows how to spell 'ulimit'.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com