tag 459611 + moreinfo thanks Hello,
On Sun, 03 Feb 2008, Norman Ramsey wrote:
> However, I do want to make sure bug 459611 is not dropped.
> I'm sure this won't be the last infinite-loop bug in ghostscript, and
> as a proper matter of defensive programming, index++ and swish++
> should protect themselves against such infinite loops---especially
> since these processes are run periodically as part of other packages
> (dhelp) and may otherwise take over a user's machine in a most unkind
> manner.
I agree that periodically run process should run within limits.
index++ and swish++ try to acquire the maximum resource limits that
are granted to the running process. I suspect this is the source
of the problem.
Since one cannot (should not?) set arbitrary limits on how long the
indexing procedure should take what is a reasonable solution to this
problem?
Some possibilities:
1. Let the parent process decide on the limits that
its children should have. In that case these limits
should be configured by cron which is the calling process.
Note that cron "knows best" what context it is running in.
For example, it should be clear that cron.hourly should not
run for more than an hour, cron.daily for more than a day
etc.
2. Have some configuration options for index++/swish++
which allow the user to set pre-defined limits. Note that
the user can already do this by setting limits *before*
calling swish++/index++. Here the burden of deciding the
context is up to the user.
I would like some feedback.
Regards,
Kapil.
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