From 7ef9964e6d1b911b78709f144000aacadd0ebc21 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Davide Libenzi Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 13:13:55 -0800 Subject: epoll: introduce resource usage limits It has been thought that the per-user file descriptors limit would also limit the resources that a normal user can request via the epoll interface. Vegard Nossum reported a very simple program (a modified version attached) that can make a normal user to request a pretty large amount of kernel memory, well within the its maximum number of fds. To solve such problem, default limits are now imposed, and /proc based configuration has been introduced. A new directory has been created, named /proc/sys/fs/epoll/ and inside there, there are two configuration points: max_user_instances = Maximum number of devices - per user max_user_watches = Maximum number of "watched" fds - per user The current default for "max_user_watches" limits the memory used by epoll to store "watches", to 1/32 of the amount of the low RAM. As example, a 256MB 32bit machine, will have "max_user_watches" set to roughly 90000. That should be enough to not break existing heavy epoll users. The default value for "max_user_instances" is set to 128, that should be enough too. This also changes the userspace, because a new error code can now come out from EPOLL_CTL_ADD (-ENOSPC). The EMFILE from epoll_create() was already listed, so that should be ok. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: use get_current_user()] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi Cc: Michael Kerrisk Cc: Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov Reported-by: Vegard Nossum Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt') diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index bcceb99b81dd..bb1b0dd3bfcb 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -44,6 +44,7 @@ Table of Contents 2.14 /proc//io - Display the IO accounting fields 2.15 /proc//coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings 2.16 /proc//mountinfo - Information about mounts + 2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Preface @@ -2483,4 +2484,30 @@ For more information on mount propagation see: Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt +2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface +-------------------------------------------------------- + +This directory contains configuration options for the epoll(7) interface. + +max_user_instances +------------------ + +This is the maximum number of epoll file descriptors that a single user can +have open at a given time. The default value is 128, and should be enough +for normal users. + +max_user_watches +---------------- + +Every epoll file descriptor can store a number of files to be monitored +for event readiness. Each one of these monitored files constitutes a "watch". +This configuration option sets the maximum number of "watches" that are +allowed for each user. +Each "watch" costs roughly 90 bytes on a 32bit kernel, and roughly 160 bytes +on a 64bit one. +The current default value for max_user_watches is the 1/32 of the available +low memory, divided for the "watch" cost in bytes. + + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + -- cgit v1.2.3