Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997 11:53:31 +0000
From: George Carrette <George_Carrette@iacnet.com>
Subject: Re: memory allocations stuff (question)
To: Stanley Gambarin <stanleyg@iacnet.com>
Cc: new-httpd <new-httpd@iacnet.com>
Message-id: <9707091559.AA6900@circus.med.iacnet.com>
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stanleyg@cs.bu.edu (Stanley Gambarin)  asks:
>Second: would it be reasonable to provide a limit on the maximum amount 
>of memory that the server may allocate (this may prevent infinite loops
>taking down whole machine with them).  The server may just exit if the 
>maximum amount of memory is reached (configurable at runtime) ?

If you apply the patches at http://cpartner.iacnet.com/apache/
then the RLimitMEM configuration parameter used in the global
context in httpd.conf will be in effect for all children of the initial httpd
process.

Currently the RLimitMEM parameter only applies to cgi scripts
and server-side-include exec statements.

When a process runs out of RLimitMEM the result is that malloc returns NULL.

I've been asked to invent new config parameter names before these
patches can be applied to the Apache sources, but I haven't been
able to think up a good name, nobody has suggested one,
and I have a preference myself to cleaning up the documentation
so that it is more carefully worded and accurate.