Re: [tlug] Out of Memory: can't log in to my machine

[Jean-Christian Imbeault <jc@example.com>]

Larry Stanbery wrote:

> How to log in?  Hm, can't help there -- best bet is to do as David 
> suggested and reboot.  The good news is that you should be able to 
> inspect your web server logs (likely in /var/log/httpd/) to see just 
> what got kicked off to be so nasty.

Hum ... don't like it but looks like the only way. The logs aren't much
help because there is not way to know which request caused the problem
since the out of memory symptom I am sure happens quite a while *after*
the request has been made.

> It _sounds_ like you've got a poorly-written CGI doing major suckage on 
> the machine.

I'm pretty sure that what it is too.

> The answer 
> was to kill the web server processes (service httpd stop), fix the PHP, 
> restart the web server, and try again.

See, the problem is that I can't control what's on the machine. All I do
is make sure the server is configured to run properly. If there's a bug
in the software packages someone has install I can't do anything about it.

> The password prompt did, eventually, show 
> up, at which point I logged in and killed the web server --

I've waited 5 hours and still no password prompt so time to reboot.

Is there a way in Linux to limit the amount of memory a user can use?
Kind of like quota for disk space? In case this happens again I'd like
the system to have some spare memory left to at least allow a login.

Thanks,

Jean-Christian Imbeault