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setrlimit(2)

NAME

     getrlimit, setrlimit -- control maximum system resource consumption

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/time.h>
     #include <sys/resource.h>

     int
     getrlimit(int resource, struct rlimit *rlp);

     int
     setrlimit(int resource, const struct rlimit *rlp);

DESCRIPTION

     Limits on the consumption of system resources by the current process and
     each process it creates may be obtained with the getrlimit() system call,
     and set with the setrlimit() system call.

     The resource argument is one of the following:

     RLIMIT_AS	     The maximum amount (in bytes) of virtual memory the
		     process is allowed to map.

     RLIMIT_CORE     The largest size (in bytes) core(5) file that may be cre-
		     ated.

     RLIMIT_CPU      The maximum amount of cpu time (in seconds) to be used by
		     each process.

     RLIMIT_DATA     The maximum size (in bytes) of the data segment for a
		     process; this defines how far a program may extend its
		     break with the sbrk(2) function.

     RLIMIT_FSIZE    The largest size (in bytes) file that may be created.

     RLIMIT_MEMLOCK  The maximum size (in bytes) which a process may lock into
		     memory using the mlock(2) system call.

     RLIMIT_NOFILE   The maximum number of open files for this process.

     RLIMIT_NPROC    The maximum number of simultaneous processes for this
		     user id.

     RLIMIT_RSS      The maximum size (in bytes) to which a process's resident
		     set size may grow.  This imposes a limit on the amount of
		     physical memory to be given to a process; if memory is
		     tight, the system will prefer to take memory from pro-
		     cesses that are exceeding their declared resident set
		     size.

     RLIMIT_SBSIZE   The maximum size (in bytes) of socket buffer usage for
		     this user.  This limits the amount of network memory, and
		     hence the amount of mbufs, that this user may hold at any

     soft limit is exceeded a process may receive a signal (for example, if
     the cpu time or file size is exceeded), but it will be allowed to con-
     tinue execution until it reaches the hard limit (or modifies its resource
     limit).  The rlimit structure is used to specify the hard and soft limits
     on a resource,

	   struct rlimit {
		   rlim_t  rlim_cur;	   /* current (soft) limit */
		   rlim_t  rlim_max;	   /* maximum value for rlim_cur */
	   };

     Only the super-user may raise the maximum limits.	Other users may only
     alter rlim_cur within the range from 0 to rlim_max or (irreversibly)
     lower rlim_max.

     An ``infinite'' value for a limit is defined as RLIM_INFINITY.

     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; limit is thus a built-in command
     to csh(1).

     The system refuses to extend the data or stack space when the limits
     would be exceeded in the normal way: a brk(2) function fails if the data
     space limit is reached.  When the stack limit is reached, the process
     receives a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV); if this signal is not caught by
     a handler using the signal stack, this signal will kill the process.

     A file I/O operation that would create a file larger that the process'
     soft limit will cause the write to fail and a signal SIGXFSZ to be gener-
     ated; this normally terminates the process, but may be caught.  When the
     soft cpu time limit is exceeded, a signal SIGXCPU is sent to the offend-
     ing process.

RETURN VALUES

     Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the
     value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
     error.

ERRORS

     The getrlimit() and setrlimit() system calls will fail if:

     [EFAULT]		The address specified for rlp is invalid.

     [EPERM]		The limit specified to setrlimit() would have raised
			the maximum limit value, and the caller is not the
			super-user.

SEE ALSO

     csh(1), quota(1), quotactl(2), sigaltstack(2), sigvec(2), sysctl(3),
     ulimit(3)

HISTORY

     The getrlimit() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

FreeBSD 5.4			 June 13, 2004			   FreeBSD 5.4

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