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

[Larry Stanbery <lstanber@example.com>]

On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 01:24  PM, Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
> ...
> 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.

Bingo!

Searching Google on "linux cpu quota" started me on the right path...
"man setrlimit" was the first clue.  However, that's simply a system 
call, and not a useful binary.

Next Google:  "linux cpu quota user"
Second link is an archive of a RH mail list.  And it mentions a magical 
file:
/etc/security/limits.conf
A little more searching shows that this is used by the PAM system to 
limit users in various ways: number of processes, resident memory size 
of a process, and duration (in minutes) of processing time.  And the 
magic file above is where RH happens to store the config.

- - - - - - - -
Larry Stanbery, RHCE
GPG Key ID: 2CEFA622