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Asked: 2026-05-11T05:06:28+00:00

I tried this experiment on my Linux desktop: int main() { while(1) fork(); return

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I tried this experiment on my Linux desktop:

int main() {   while(1)     fork();   return 0; }

I ran this program as normal user(not root), i was surprised to find that it brought down my system, it has become unresponsive. I had hoped that due to resource limit exhaustion my process would have been killed,but apparently this is not the case. Any ideas why?

thanks, Sid.

PS: this was my office Linux box on which i was experimenting from home, i hope everything will be okay when i restart it tomorrow ….

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1 Answer

  1. You’ve re-invented a fork bomb.

    I think most Linux distributions don’t set per-user resource limits by default. You can configure them of course, but you probably haven’t.

    The machine will be fine after a reboot – unless the CPU usage has caused over-heating problems.

    To prevent an ordinary user from spawning too many processes you need to add configuration to /etc/security/limits.conf

    You can use ulimit to set limits that would apply to your current session if you think you’re going to run a program that might start too many processes or use up too much of other resources.

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