[comp.unix.aux] limit, ulimit, and process restraint.

schiebel@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Darrell Schiebel) (05/08/91)

	I'm working on porting a application to A/UX. It uses "brk"
	to increase its data segment. However, the system seems to
	have no upper limit set for the data size. As a result,
	this application keeps grabbing memory until finally all of
	the swap space is gone and the system hangs.

	The application has code built in to handle when it has 
	reached the limit of its data size. So, my question is
	why does A/UX allow a process to take ALL of the swap
	space without stopping the process? Secondly (and most
	importantly) how can I set the limit so A/UX will give
	up only the swap it can spare? Thus, the sun equivalent
	(from the C-shell) is: "limit datasize <size limit>".
	Unfortunately, A/UX's C-shell doesn't recognize "limit".
	and "tcsh" appears to recognize "filesize" as the only
	limit which can be set.

	"ulimit" seemed like a possibility, but it also seems to only
	allow one to specify a limit for "filesize" which doesn't seem 
	to be equivalent to specifying a limit for the "datasize."

				I'd REALLY appreciate any suggestions.

					Darrell Schiebel
					(schiebel@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu)
					(drs@baks.bell-atl.com)