Hi!
I am a Mandrake user.
Suppose a (non-super)user wants to write a little program something like

char arr[2048576];
int main()
{
memset(arr, 65, 2048576);
return 0;
}

As you see he/she tries to allocate more than 1 MB memory.
My problem is to configure the Linux so that it will kill any process/program run by a non-superuser trying to use or allocate, say, more than 1 MB memory. How can I do it?
I have already tried to use ulimit, setrlimit and modify /etc/security/limits.conf, but it did not work.

Thank you in advance.

Difficult to do, as the memory is assigned in pages by the kernel.

It is made even more difficult because of the way the kernel assess memory usage in linked applications (all that are not statically compiled)...

E.g
xterm itself needs say, 1mb
xterm links against a library that uses say, 5mb

if you start 2 xterms
Memory usage (in top etc) will show each xterm using 6mb, when in reality, the total usage is 7mb between both xterms, rather than the anticipated 12mb via top.

Then, could we put a limit on number of pages?

Anyway, in fact my problem would be resolved if I could at least be able to detect the maximal size of memory used at a particular time of the execution of a process. I tried to use getrusage but it also failed, that is, it always shows 0 bytes. . Any idea?

For limiting:
man bash
/ulimit

Specifically -l and -v.

To find usage: valgrind? ps? top?



Cheers,
Tink