[Sugar-devel] RAM DoS (was: Re: Fwd: Activity startup idea)

[Sascha Silbe]

On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 11:52:53AM -0500, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> It happens to me at least once every couple of days on build 
> 767...first the
> UI freezes, then the trackpad stops responding, and if I'm lucky I can
> manage to Ctrl-Alt-F1 and kill Browse before having to just hard power 
> off.
This sounds like a security issue to me. Strangely, Bitfrost [1] only 
seems to address CPU and NAND exhaustion, but not RAM.
No activity should be able to do what you describe above, whether 
intentionally or not.
While a low memory warning has merits on its own, the underlying issue 
should be fixed as well. The most simple thing to do would be limiting 
segment sizes. Better solutions might tweak priorities for "core" system 
components (like sugar-shell) and/or require kernel changes (e.g. 
implement RLIMIT_RSS handling).


[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost

CU Sascha

-- 
http://sascha.silbe.org/
http://www.infra-silbe.de/
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