site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com Hi, On 10.{8,9} In a situation where the malloc request: is < MALLOC_ABSOLUTE_MAX_SIZE but > [total RAM + total free swap partition space] or > ulimit -v , or ulimit -d (regardless of soft/hard) it seems that malloc() returns a non-NULL pointer (i.e. without error). --- ---- (a) Is malloc() supposed to honor ulimits? - There doesn't appear to be a RLIMIT_VMEM so that control is not avail. ---- cheers and season's greetings, Iain _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... Subsequent use of the returned pointer can (and does) bring the system down once you see a "no free paging space left" message thing are looking grim. Interposing malloc debug puts up the appropriate "insane request" message - but under 'normal' malloc the program runs on happily until the system dies. (b) Is malloc() supposed to allow requests in excess of available system resources? ( I would be amongst the first to agree that providing a robust solution is non-trivial -- but... that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying). This behavior is troublesome - because a simple non-privileged program compiled -m64 can easily stop the system (with loss of any data that depends on a program that depend on malloc --- i.e. pretty much all of them) does any of the behavior described constitute a bug -- or perhaps an enhancement ? This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com