[colug-432] my shell is better^H^H^H^H^H^Hdifferent than yours: NSFW (but not for the reason you might think)

Jon Miller jonebird at gmail.com
Tue Dec 6 12:23:31 EST 2011


I'm not sure the shell actually is restricting you from doing this
"dumb" thing. Let's strace it! :-)
strace -vall -f bash -c 'read line < /dev/zero' >
bash_read-alotofzeros.strace 2>&1

While that is running, I'm watching "vmstat 5" and seeing my free
memory being depleted. If I see my system start to swap, I'll hit
Ctrl-c on the strace, but I'd really like it to complete much like the
rest of everyone's tests.
# BTW, another interesting thing to do, while waiting for your box to
crash, is to identify the pid for bash and run:
watch -d 'pmap -x <pid>'

Still waiting for it... vmstat tells me that it started freeing up
memory from it's buffers to feed my hungry bash shell. Now that  it's
starting to level off at a low value, my cache too is being depleted.
(BTW, whenever I'm asked to watch a system during a performance test
(pt), I like to have sar enabled and watch vmstat during the run.)

The saga continues and since the workstation I'm doing this on isn't
mine, I'm going to feel bad if I end up crashing the system.
Considering I'm now actively swapping at each 5sec interval, I'm going
to cancel this experiment. My bash shell had over a gig in RSS before
pulling the plug and it didn't look like there were signs of stopping.
Had I left it going I suspect the kernel would eventually invoke the
dreaded out-of-memory (OOM) killer. Perhaps someone else can try the
strace where their bash shell was "saving" them?

-- Jon Miller
P.s. The workstation is running FC14, kernel is
2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 and bash is 4.1.7(1)-release.

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Chris Anderson <canderson at foxtwo.net> wrote:
> What exactly is wrong with just using Ctr-C to cancel this? Seems to work
> for me. I don't like the idea of a shell restricting my options to keep me
> from doing something dumb. That's what my brain is there for...
>
> I guess it is a matter of opinion, but I like Nanny shells about as much as
> I like Nanny states...
>
> On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 8:39 AM, Jeff Frontz <jeff.frontz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On the AST (AT&T Software Technology) user's mailing list, Glen Fowler
>> recently posted this snippet:
>>
>> > ... the seemingly good idea of "no limits" is not always a good idea
>> > proof of concept: try this with bash on a system that you can reboot
>> > with a physical button:
>> >
>> >        bash -c 'read line < /dev/zero'
>> >
>>
>> The context was why doesn't ksh let you read an arbitrarily long line of
>> text with the built-in "read" command (and why that limitation is on
>> purpose, but unfortunately undocumented).
>>
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> Content preview:  On the AST (AT&T Software Technology) user's mailing
>> list,
>>
>>   Glen Fowler recently posted this snippet: > ... the seemingly good idea
>> of
>>   "no limits" is not always a good idea > proof of concept: try this with
>> bash
>>   on a system that you can reboot with a physical button: > > bash -c
>> 'read
>>   line < /dev/zero' > [...]
>>
>> Content analysis details:   (5.0 points, 5.0 required)
>>
>>  pts rule name              description
>> ---- ----------------------
>> --------------------------------------------------
>>  3.8 BAYES_99               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99 to 100%
>>                            [score: 1.0000]
>>  0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM          Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail
>> provider
>>                            (vdgr3dok[at]hotmail.com)
>>                            (jeff.frontz[at]gmail.com)
>>  1.2 GAPPY_SUBJECT          Subject: contains G.a.p.p.y-T.e.x.t
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>> Content preview:  On the AST (AT&T Software Technology) user's mailing
>> list,
>>
>>   Glen Fowler recently posted this snippet: > ... the seemingly good idea
>> of
>>   "no limits" is not always a good idea > proof of concept: try this with
>> bash
>>   on a system that you can reboot with a physical button: > > bash -c
>> 'read
>>   line < /dev/zero' > [...]
>>
>> Content analysis details:   (5.0 points, 5.0 required)
>>
>>  pts rule name              description
>> ---- ----------------------
>> --------------------------------------------------
>>  3.8 BAYES_99               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99 to 100%
>>                            [score: 1.0000]
>>  0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM          Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail
>> provider
>>                            (sefrie-bbs[at]yahoo.com)
>>                            (jeff.frontz[at]gmail.com)
>>                            (jeff.frontz[at]gmail.com)
>>  1.2 GAPPY_SUBJECT          Subject: contains G.a.p.p.y-T.e.x.t
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>>
>
>
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> Content preview:  What exactly is wrong with just using Ctr-C to cancel
> this?
>   Seems to work for me. I don't like the idea of a shell restricting my
> options
>   to keep me from doing something dumb. That's what my brain is there for...
>   [...]
>
> Content analysis details:   (5.0 points, 5.0 required)
>
>  pts rule name              description
> ---- ----------------------
> --------------------------------------------------
>  3.8 BAYES_99               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99 to 100%
>                            [score: 0.9999]
>  0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM          Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail
> provider
>                            (vdgr3dok[at]hotmail.com)
>                            (jeff.frontz[at]gmail.com)
>                            (gymequipment[at]ymail.com)
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> Content preview:  What exactly is wrong with just using Ctr-C to cancel
> this?
>   Seems to work for me. I don't like the idea of a shell restricting my
> options
>   to keep me from doing something dumb. That's what my brain is there for...
>   [...]
>
> Content analysis details:   (5.0 points, 5.0 required)
>
>  pts rule name              description
> ---- ----------------------
> --------------------------------------------------
>  3.8 BAYES_99               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99 to 100%
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