From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753177AbXCMInF (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:43:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753185AbXCMInF (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:43:05 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:36258 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753177AbXCMInE (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:43:04 -0400 From: Roland McGrath To: Linus Torvalds , Andrew Morton Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org X-Fcc: ~/Mail/linus Subject: [PATCH] Remove CHILD_MAX Emacs: where editing text is like playing Paganini on a glass harmonica. Message-Id: <20070313084229.B31FA1801C5@magilla.sf.frob.com> Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:42:29 -0700 (PDT) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org The CHILD_MAX macro in limits.h should not be there. It claims to be the limit on processes a user can own, but its value is wrong for that. There is no constant value, but a variable resource limit (RLIMIT_NPROC). Nothing in the kernel uses CHILD_MAX. The proper thing to do according to POSIX is not to define CHILD_MAX at all. The sysconf (_SC_CHILD_MAX) implementation works by calling getrlimit. Signed-off-by: Roland McGrath --- include/linux/limits.h | 1 - 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/include/linux/limits.h b/include/linux/limits.h index c4b4e57..2d0f941 100644 --- a/include/linux/limits.h +++ b/include/linux/limits.h @@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ #define NGROUPS_MAX 65536 /* supplemental group IDs are available */ #define ARG_MAX 131072 /* # bytes of args + environ for exec() */ -#define CHILD_MAX 999 /* no limit :-) */ #define LINK_MAX 127 /* # links a file may have */ #define MAX_CANON 255 /* size of the canonical input queue */ #define MAX_INPUT 255 /* size of the type-ahead buffer */