user limits for 'security'?

[LA Walsh <law@sgi.com>]

I've seen some people saying that user-limits are an essential part of a
secure system to prevent local DoS attacks.  Given that, should
a system call like 'fork' return -EPERM if the user has reached their
limit?

My local manpage (SuSE 7.2 system) says this under fork:

ERRORS
       EAGAIN fork  cannot allocate sufficient memory to copy the
              parent's page tables and allocate a task  structure
              for the child.
-----
    Should the man page be updated to reflect that EAGAIN is returned
when the user has reached their limit?  From a user-monitoring point
of view, it might be security relevant to know if a EAGAIN is being
returned because the system really is low on resources or if it
is a user hitting their limit.

--
The above thoughts and            | I know I don't know the opinions
writings are my own.              | of every part of my company. :-)
L A Walsh, law at sgi.com         | Sr Eng, Trust Technology
01-650-933-5338                   | Core Linux, SGI