Quick question.

Wed Aug 4 07:09:13 UTC 2004

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Paul G wrote:

> the second cpu buys you time - it is unlikely you're going to be 
> able to react in time on a busy single cpu box with a runaway 
> process (it launches into a death sprial almost immediately), but 
> you would usually have 10-15 mins on a dual cpu box at a minimum or 
> maybe infinity if you enforce cpu affinity for apps that tend to 
> misbehave.

Why do you have 10-15 mins? If the application is multi-threaded and 
has a reasonable workload, there are plenty of types of bugs that 
will result in one spinning thread after the other, you need far 
more than just 2 CPUs! Or maybe your application vendor has "at least 
10minutes between hitting bugs!" on it's feature list? ;)

Really, what you to need do is (in the face of such buggy apps) is to 
set per-task CPU time resource limits appropriate to how much 
cpu-time a task needs and how much you can afford - be it a 1, 2 or n 
CPU system.

> paul

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.