Hi All,

Ok.. i've researched and researched and only found a way to limit the amount of memory consumed by the entire system.

Now, what i want to do is this.

I have process running X

I want to say, hey process X you can only have 128 megs of memory to use...

and then see how process X responds, fails, dies, stabilizes.. etc...

All i can find is stuff about using ulimit to limit the memory of the system.

Anyone know of any tools out there that limit the amount of memory that is able to be allocated to a specific process and it's forked processes?

Maybe this is a huge request, and nothing has been done in this area yet. But i figured i'd ask.


In case you're wondering why the Heck i'd want to do such a thing, I'm a Test Infrastructure Architect for Motorola. This is the type of negative testing we do sometimes.

Thanks in advance

Actually, if you do use ulimit, it will limit the memory to your current shell and all subprocesses. Given that the shell uses very little memory, this can be a close test.

The programs/processes i want to limit are started during initialization. But maybe i could restart them in the shell i'm in, and do a ulimit that way. Hmmm.. good idea

how exactly would I adjust ulimit to do that?

just do a ulimit -m <size in megabytes?>

thanks

You could also, if they use an initialization script, put the ulimit in there. I believe ulimit -m should be sufficient, man ulimit can tell you more.