scripts.mit.edu

Do you enforce any resource limits?

Yes. The server enforces the following resource limits on web scripts:

core file size          (blocks) 0
data seg size           (kbytes) 1048576
file size               (blocks) unlimited
pending signals                  32255
max locked memory       (kbytes) 32
max memory size         (kbytes) 524268
open files                       1024
pipe size            (512 bytes) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes) 819200
stack size              (kbytes) 10240
cpu time               (seconds) 300
max user processes               4096
virtual memory          (kbytes) 524288
file locks                       unlimited

These limits exist primarily to protect the server from runaway scripts.

There are also some timeouts in the Apache configuration that apply to web scripts. In particular, if a CGI or FastCGI application goes 30 seconds without writing and flushing any data back to Apache, the request will be aborted.

Finally, there are also looser limits placed on processes launched from a non-web context:

core file size          (blocks) 0
data seg size           (kbytes) 1048576
file size               (blocks) unlimited
pending signals                  32255
max locked memory       (kbytes) 32
max memory size         (kbytes) 524268
open files                       1024
pipe size            (512 bytes) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes) 819200
stack size              (kbytes) 10240
cpu time               (seconds) unlimited
max user processes               1024
virtual memory          (kbytes) 1048576
file locks                       unlimited

If you find yourself running into these limits on a regular basis, please contact us to let us know what is triggering the limits.