Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!tness7!ninja!dalsqnt!rpp386!pigs!haugj
From: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Are these binaries "safe"?
Summary: no big deal ...
Message-ID: <231@pigs.UUCP>
Date: 13 Aug 88 20:22:14 GMT
References: <4774@csli.STANFORD.EDU> <30587@clyde.ATT.COM> <8475@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <727@ns.UUCP> <299@babel.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <577@rtg.cme-durer.ARPA>
Reply-To: haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie)
Organization: Big "D" Oil and Gas
Lines: 28

In article <577@rtg.cme-durer.ARPA> brickman@rtg (Jonathan E. Brickman) writes:
>Here's another one.  Simple as can be.  It's a csh script for any and all
>Unix systems:
>----------------START------------
>$HOME/tw &
>$HOME/tw &
>----------------END--------------
>where "$HOME/tw" is the name of the csh script.  The result of running this
>is the devouring of all available processes, until all process space is
>taken up.

this would have to be run as root and would probably only work ONCE.  the
reason being that MAXUPC sets the maximum number of processes a user may
have to be some fixed value.  run away process can't run too far ...

also, only root can take the last process table slot.  this means in
effect that root can eventually wrest control away from something like
this.  or, failing a reasonable approach, telinit s will surely return
something resembling sanity.  (or kill -1 1 for the xenix crowd.)  or,
better still, if you are running a real unix derivative, /etc/killall
should clean things up with one single command.

there are REAL ways to totally trash a unix machine, this is just not
one of them.
-- 
 jfh@rpp386.uucp	(The Beach Bum at The Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers)
     "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity"
                -- Hanlon's Razor