Description of problem: The system hangs and require a poweroff. We setup the system to serve as our Perforce server (source control) and three hours after the switch the system hung (Previous system was a RH 7.2). After a reboot the P4D (perforce daemon) peaksout using all available memory and hangs the system. But the script below does the same thing and even if I create a normal account and run the below command as a normal user the system hangs I'd say that it's a serious DoS problem. [per@system per$] perl -e 'while(1){push(@nasty, "nasty" x 1024)}' Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.4.21-15.EL How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1.start a console as a normal user 2.perl -e 'while(1){push(@nasty, "nasty" x 1024)}' 3.sytem hangs instead of stopping the program. Actual results: System hang Expected results: Shell crash or application termination not system hang. Additional info: Sysrq is available to produce dumps. The perl command has not been able to hang a u2date FedoraC 1 installation or SLES9 but several RH EL 3 machines. SMP machines has not crashed hard instead it just makes the server not respond.
Does the bug happen when you turn off memory overcommit by "echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory" ?
No, it does not. I get "Segementation fault" and "Out of momory!" as both root and user. So what next? This makes the application crasch although it doesn't take the server with it (which is good). Can I provide you with logs or other sets of data? PL
Well, what do you expect an application that allocates infinite memory to do once the system doesn't have any more memory to allocate ? ;) Does switching off memory overcommit make your system behave in the desired way ?