[erlang-questions] Why Beam.smp crashes when memory is over?

[Ulf Wiger]

Richard O'Keefe wrote:
>> One way would be to let the user set a memory quota on a process with
>> options at spawn time. When the process reaches it quota it can be
>> automatically killed or the user can
>> be notified in some way and take actions.
> 
> One of the reasons this hasn't been done is, I presume, the fact that
> it is quite difficult for a programmer to determine what the memory
> quota should be.  It depends on
>  ...

I implemented resource limits in erlhive - at the Erlang level rather
than in the VM. The purpose was to be able to run foreign code safely
in a hosted environment. Eliminating the possibility to do damage
through traditional side-effects was relatively easy with a code
transform, but two ways of staging a DoS attack would be to gobble
RAM or CPU capacity. I approached this by inserting calls to a check
function that sampled heap size, and started a "watchdog" process that
would unceremoniously kill the program after a certain time.

In short, I can see a need for such limits, and would like to include
a reduction ceiling. The limits could be set after careful testing
and high enough that they protect against runaway processes. A reduction
limit could be checked at the end of each slice, perhaps.

In my experience, per-process memory usage is fairly predictable in
erlang. Does anyone have a different experience?

BR,
Ulf W
-- 
Ulf Wiger
CTO, Erlang Training & Consulting Ltd
http://www.erlang-consulting.com