On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 09:55:01 -0800
Dane Mutters <dmutters@gmail.com> wrote:

quoted text
> I don't know if this is at all feasible, but is it possible to have a
> mechanism that would detect a fork bomb in progress and either stop the
> fork, or allow the user to cancel the operation?  For example, are there
> any legitimate processes (i.e. ones that really need to fork like crazy)
> that would need to generate 200+ processes in less than 1 second?
>=20
> (Note: I'm not a programmer; I'm just throwing out the idea.)
>=20

If the parent PID of the new task is exported through TASKSTATS, you can
do it already in userspace. If not, that data should be exported.

Then you could write a root daemon using netlink, set it to RT priority
and create an inheritable counter in it to thwart binary forking.
The counter would be cleared every x seconds.
No need to do it in the kernel.