Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760933AbYB2RSo (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:18:44 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1761535AbYB2RSb (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:18:31 -0500 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([18.85.46.34]:50698 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1761528AbYB2RSa (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:18:30 -0500 Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH] RLIMIT_ARG_MAX From: Peter Zijlstra To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Michael Kerrisk , aaw , Andrew Morton , michael.kerrisk@gmail.com, carlos@codesourcery.com, Alan Cox , linux-kernel , drepper@redhat.com, mtk.manpages@gmail.com In-Reply-To: References: <1204119455.6242.403.camel@lappy> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:18:08 +0100 Message-Id: <1204305488.6243.113.camel@lappy> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.21.90 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 936 Lines: 23 On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 09:12 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > 2. It provides a sane mechanism for an application to determine the > > space available for argv+environ. Formerly this space was an > > invariant, advertised via sysconf(_SC_ARG_MAX). > > ... and what's the point? We've never had it before, nobody has ever cared, > and the whole notion is just stupid. Why would we want to limit it? The > only thing that the kernel *cares* about is the stack size - any other > size limits are always going to be arbitrary. Well, don't think of limiting it, but querying the limit. Programs like xargs would need to know how much to stuff into argv before starting a new invocation. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/