On 1/31/07, Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dr. Markus Waldeck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
typed:
> > > > typing "while :; do :; done". There are a thousand ways
>
> > No. What I write above is not a "fork bomb", it's a single
> > process which is wasting CPU in a busy loop. It's exactly
> > equivalent to top(1) with zero delay, except that top
> > produces some output, while a busy loop does nothing useful
> > at all.
>
> I tested different shells and I found out that an exlicit sub shell
> is required to let the shell fork:
>
> while :; do (:); done
That's still not a fork bomb. While it creates a process every time
through the loop, the process exits before the loop continues, so
you've still got just a few processes. Basicaly, it's still a busy
loop.
A true fork bomb creates an ever-increasing number of processes,
typically by forking copies of itself (which led to them being called
"rabbit jobs" when I first ran into one).
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
Don't forget that a real fork bomb would fork forking forkers thereby
growing the process overhead and time exponentially!
e.g:
perl -e 'while(1) { fork; };'
--
Coleman Kane
_______________________________________________
freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
