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Re: Recursively calling a bash script goes undetected and eats all syste


From: Pierre Gaston
Subject: Re: Recursively calling a bash script goes undetected and eats all system memory
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 20:44:29 +0200

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Diggory Hardy <diggory.hardy@unibas.ch> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> With a simple script such as that below, bash can enter an infinite loop of 
> eating memory until the system is rendered unusable:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> PATH=~
> infinitely-recurse
>
> Save this as infinitely-recurse in your home directory and run - and make 
> sure you kill it pretty quick. OK, so an obvious bug when put like this, 
> though it bit me recently (mistakenly using PATH as an ordinary variable and 
> having a script with the same name as a system program). Would it not be 
> simple to add some kind of protection against this — say don't let a script 
> call itself more than 100 times?
>
> Thanks,
> Diggory
>
Well, I'm not a big fan of the technique, but out there I see a lot of
wrapper scripts calling themselves to automatically restart an
application.



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