Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!orc!inews!kseshadr@quasar.intel.com
From: kseshadr@quasar.intel.com (Kishore Seshadri)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How do you handle while(1) fork(); ?
Message-ID: <2473@inews.intel.com>
Date: 13 Jul 90 17:36:27 GMT
References: <841@massey.ac.nz> <1990Jul11.115612.2155@aucs.uucp>
Sender: news@inews.intel.com
Reply-To: kseshadr@quasar.intel.com (Kishore Seshadri)
Organization: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, California
Lines: 28
In-reply-to: peter@aucs.uucp (Peter Steele)

In article <1990Jul11.115612.2155@aucs.uucp>, peter@aucs (Peter Steele) writes:
>ARaman@massey.ac.nz (A.V. Raman) writes:
>
>>Is there any way to kill all instances of a process that has the
>>following piece of code in it without having to bring the system down?
>
>>   while (1)
>>      fork();
>
>>Any help (by email) would be appreciated.

I actually haven't had to deal with this, but wouldn't killing the login
shell of the "offender" handle the simple cases like this? Of course,
this may not work for cases where the process has detached itself from
the tty or changed its process group. You could try writing something
that does a vhangup on the offender's tty and then actually go through
the proc table looking for other processes owned by the person. This
may be pretty drastic solution, however! 

I'd be interested in hearing other ways of doing this.

Kishore
kishore@mipos3.intel.com

===============================================================================
Kishore Seshadri (Speaking only for myself) Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA
CSNET: kseshadr@mipos3.intel.com ARPA: kseshadr%mipos3.intel.com@relay.cs.net
UUCP:{amdcad,decwrl,hplabs,oliveb,pur-ee,qantel}!intelca!mipos3!kseshadr