artswrapper defanged

[Ryan Cumming]

On July 12, 2002 06:23, Rob Kaper wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 02:55:51PM +0200, Martijn Klingens wrote:
> > The point is not how well it performs. The point is whether it takes down
> > the whole system or not.
>
> There's 5%-10% disk space reserved for root administration and emergencies,
> I wonder why this is not the case for memory and CPU cycles.

That's mostly an urban myth on Linux. Memory map a big file, bigger than the 
limit. Since the file is just one big hole now, you don't trigger the limit. 
Now start writing to the memory mapped area. KSwapd will detect memory 
pressure and start writing out pages. What does kswapd run as? Root. Any user 
app can fill up the 5-10% easily.

-Ryan