.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)vlimit.3 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 .\" .Dd June 4, 1993 .Dt VLIMIT 3 .Os BSD 4 .Sh NAME .Nm vlimit .Nd control maximum system resource consumption .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include .Fn vlimit resource value .Sh DESCRIPTION .Bf -symbolic This interface is obsoleted by getrlimit(2). It is available from the compatibility library, libcompat. .Ef .Pp Limits the consumption by the current process and each process it creates to not individually exceed .Fa value on the specified .Fa resource . If .Fa value is specified as \-1, then the current limit is returned and the limit is unchanged. The resources which are currently controllable are: .Bl -tag -width LIM_NORAISE .It Dv LIM_NORAISE A pseudo-limit; if set non-zero then the limits may not be raised. Only the super-user may remove the .Em noraise restriction. .It Dv LIM_CPU the maximum number of cpu-seconds to be used by each process .It Dv LIM_FSIZE the largest single file which can be created .It Dv LIM_DATA the maximum growth of the data+stack region via .Xr sbrk 2 beyond the end of the program text .It Dv LIM_STACK the maximum size of the automatically-extended stack region .It Dv LIM_CORE the size of the largest core dump that will be created. .It Dv LIM_MAXRSS a soft limit for the amount of physical memory (in bytes) to be given to the program. If memory is tight, the system will prefer to take memory from processes which are exceeding their declared .Dv LIM_MAXRSS. .El .Pp Because this information is stored in the per-process information this system call must be executed directly by the shell if it is to affect all future processes created by the shell; .Xr limit is thus a built-in command to .Xr csh 1 . .Pp The system refuses to extend the data or stack space when the limits would be exceeded in the normal way; a .Xr break 2 call fails if the data space limit is reached, or the process is killed when the stack limit is reached (since the stack cannot be extended, there is no way to send a signal!). .Pp A file .Tn I/O operation which would create a file which is too large will cause a signal .Dv SIGXFSZ to be generated, this normally terminates the process, but may be caught. When the cpu time limit is exceeded, a signal .Dv SIGXCPU is sent to the offending process; to allow it time to process the signal it is given 5 seconds grace by raising the .Tn CPU time limit. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr csh 1 .Sh HISTORY The .Fn vlimit function appeared in .Bx 4.2 . .Sh BUGS .Dv LIM_NORAISE no longer exists.