[arch-general] virtual memory exhausted

[Mauro Santos]

On 29-07-2011 23:55, Jorge Almeida wrote:
> Agreed. But how is one supposed to know how to choose sane values?

For the "max user processes" what I've seen is that you want to set it a
little over the maximum number of tasks you expect to run (the number
that top reports) so there is some protection from any program going
rogue and starting to create new threads. I've seen people saying 256 to
512 is a good number (depends on the amount of programs and cruft you
intend to have running), for a single user system, which most personal
systems are, it should be enough.

However on some distros this limit is sometimes even higher than it is
on arch by default, on other distros it is somewhat smaller (but still
way too big to really avoid even simple fork bombs I'd say) so either I
got the wrong idea or no one looks into this, which is a shame because
it seems some sensible ulimit defaults might help avoid some crashes.
The only trouble with this stuff is that one size doesn't fit all and
what may be sensible to some users might not be enough (or too much) for
others.

-- 
Mauro Santos