Re: [PATCH] fix infinite loop eating all the memory

[Colin Leroy]

On 07 Oct 2005 at 17h10, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

Hi, 

> | Avoid arbitrary limits on the length or number of _any_ data
> | structure, including file names, lines, files, and symbols, by
> | allocating all data structures dynamically.  In most Unix
> | utilities, "long lines are silently truncated".  This is not
> | acceptable in a GNU utility.

Thanks for the information. In this patch however, there was no silent
truncation but an explicit error. Also, as stated, "[this patch] may not
be perfect". At which point would the arbitrary limit become acceptable? 
10MB of data seems big enough to avoid hitting the case on any normal
file, for example.

Well, anyway, I don't really care about this but I find it strange to
prefer not controlling the memory growth of a program *at all* than to
avoid putting the system into a potentially dangerous state. the OOM
killer is known to sometimes misbehave and may well kill sshd on a
remote server.
-- 
Colin