top delay value

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jan 30), waldeck at gmx.de said:
> An unprivileged user could waste all CPU time by setting a low delay
> value in top (interactive or via -s).

Are you sure?  In 6.2 at least, "s0" in interactive mode results in a
1-second delay, and "top -s0" prints

 top: warning: seconds delay should be positive -- using default
 ....

What version of FreeBSD are you seeing this on?

> Is there any possibility to deactivate this functionality without
> recompilation?
> 
> There are other top implementations that use a "secure mode"
> configuration which avoids the setting of the delay value for
> unprivileged users.

Users can hog CPU by running "while true ; do done" or any number of
other methods.  That's what CPU limits are for :)

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com