Re: ulimit for groups

On Apr 11, 6:39 am, Michael Tosch <eed...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
adam.carhe...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I need a way to limit the maximum memory used by a group of people
(i.e. ulimit for groups).

I have a server with 32G of memory but very little swap space. I have
users running processes that take up large amounts of memory (30+ G).
If I get a few large jobs running, the system becomes unresponsive,
presumably because sshd can't allocate enough memory to start a new
login process. I can still ping it, but ssh fails and console logins
give a "login timed out after 60 seconds" before the password prompt
appears.

ulimit, of course, comes to mind. I can set limits for individual
users in /etc/security/limits.conf, but if two different users each
run jobs that allocate 20G of memory, I'm in the same situation. Using
the @group syntax in limits.conf simply sets that limit for each user
in that group individually, not a combined limit for the entire group.
I need a solution to limit the maximum amount of memory allocated by
all user processes to <32G, while still allowing individual users to
allocate as much memory as is available.

Also, please don't suggest buying a drive for swap, as I've tried this
on another system and it just makes login fail half the time,
depending on if the system can access swap before before login times
out.

Also, user training isn't an option as users just don't listen.

In Solaris "projects" can assign system resources to users and groups.

man project

--
Michael Tosch @ hp : com

Thanks for the info. projects/rcap sounds like exactly what I need,
but from everything I can find on Google, it's a solars-only tool. Any
chance you know otherwise?

I think I'll attempt user training before I reinstall the OS and
everything on it. :)

.

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