[ale] Limiting Processes

[Chris Ricker]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Chris Fowler wrote:

> Is there a way in 2.4.X to limit the total number of processes that can be
> ran on one system?  I know in 2.2.X I just edited task.h and made a change.

On 2.4 the hard limit is based off of memory.  See kernel/fork.c and look at 
fork_init():

        max_threads = mempages / (THREAD_SIZE/PAGE_SIZE) / 8;

        init_task.rlim[RLIMIT_NPROC].rlim_cur = max_threads/2;
        init_task.rlim[RLIMIT_NPROC].rlim_max = max_threads/2;


(remember, in Linux, a process == thread)

There's also a sysctl for this, or the /proc/sys/kernel/threads-max file 
where you can dynamically modify the limit.

later,
chris


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