Re: Any particular reason we don't have sshd oomprotected by default?

From: Philip Paeps <philip_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 02:31:53 UTC
On 2023-11-10 03:59:59 (+0800), Cy Schubert wrote:
> Philip Paeps writes:
>> On 2023-11-09 16:09:00 (+0800), Robert Clausecker wrote:
>>> I encountered the same issue a while ago, leaving my system in a
>>> vegetative state.  I would propose to add syslogd and cron to the
>>> list.  Syslogd because when it dies and you don't notice, you may go
>>> for
>>> a long time without syslogs, cron because a dead cron means no
>>> housekeeping tasks happen, including some which the administrator 
>>> may
>>> have intended to fix an issue causing an OOM condition (e.g.
>>> periodically restarting services with known memory leaks or cleaning
>>> tmpfs-based file systems).
>>
>> In my experience, cron is more often the cause of an OOM condition 
>> than
>> a help to making it stop. :-)
>
> Would that be cron or something that cron has started?

A common pathology is something that is started every few minutes in the 
expectation that it will take less than a few minutes to run.  Instead, 
it runs away with all memory.  I'd rather let cron die of starvation 
than have it make the situation worse.

So yes: something that has started.  cron itself is not eating all 
memory.

Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Alternative Enterprises