Is Euphoria a virus ?
As a result of somebody running a rather questionable CGI script that I
wrote in Eu, my College student server was totally dead for 18 hours. It
unfortunately happens that this server handles just about everything
student in the college - everybody's web sites, including countless
societies, student email, the student linux system, student filespace and
the system for common username-password access to multiple machines. All
of these facilities were unavailable during this time.
So what, you might say. Well the script I wrote was a simple test to see
how many dimensions I could get in a sequence before memory ran
out. Million-dimensional sequences were no problem, bravo ! But
unfortunately when given too much to do, and running out of memory, this
programme has an awful tendency to take other tasks down with it
(presumably because it takes the memory that they were just about to
grab). When this task happens to be inetd and the said machine is locked
away somewhere you have a problem ie dead computer.
There is an inherent flaw somewhere, perhaps in the ethos of the linux
kernel, or perhaps in eu's attitude to memory. The local nerds are
convinced that I am unreasonable, and that eu is inherently evil.
I wonder whether C, for example, could potentially cause the same
problem. What bugs me is that any undebugged programme that uses recursion
could cause this same problem, and I don't want to get eaten alive again
for crashing the student server.
What needs to change ? Eu or Linux ?
Daniel
--
Today's Proverb :
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not rely on your own understanding
(3v5)
Daniel Johnson Engineer, smartypants and clown
Jesus College, Cambridge all at a very reasonable price
dpj22 at cam.ac.uk
zeus.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~dpj22 talk dpj22 at jewish.jesus.cam.ac.uk
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