Greetings. I have already done some high level searchs of the linux-kernel mailing list, as well as linux24.sourceforge.net (tytso's 2.4 todo list) and haven't seen mention of a problem referencing this problem. The problem is large numbers of threads in 2.4.0-test8 can result in a hard crash of the entire kernel. This can be done as a non-root user. Code to reproduce the problem (using perl-threads), as well as my kernel-config are available at http://www.psyber.com/~ted/linux24crash/ [1] The code creates X threads and lets them run Y seconds. When X > 1000 instabilty sets in, with segfaults on exit. For X > 1025 (or so) a ctrl-c during the run will cause a kernel crash. This happens even if the process is running as a non-root user. Instant kernel take-down. (1200 to 1500 threads with a ctrl-c guarantee a crash on my machine.) The machine is an Athlon 750 w/ 128mb (crucial memory) on a Asus K7V, running Debian/potato (partly w/ "unstable" packages") and the 2.4.0-test8 kernel. This test didn't phase a 2.2.13 kernel, but only 253 threads started sucessfully (limited by "max user processes" I assume). 2.4.0-test8 seems limited by some sort of max-files-per-process problem on process cleanup/exit, _although_ changing the open-files via ulimit on 2.4.0-test8 or 2.2.13 had no affect (either to a value of 1500 or 130). Obviously this is a major bug that should hold up the 2.4 release until it is resolved. I apologize for not having a patch or a C version of the code... the new job is keeping me more busy than I'd like. [1] http://www.psyber.com/~ted/linux24crash/ I figured 20k of extra traffic to the list should be avoided as probably less than 20 of you will look deeply at this. -- Ted Deppner http://www.psyber.com/~ted/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
