top delay value

[Mike Meyer]

In <20070131170241.230960 at gmx.net>, Dr. Markus Waldeck <waldeck at gmx.de> typed:
> >  > > typing "while :; do :; done".  There are a thousand ways
> 
> > No.  What I write above is not a "fork bomb", it's a single
> > process which is wasting CPU in a busy loop.  It's exactly
> > equivalent to top(1) with zero delay, except that top
> > produces some output, while a busy loop does nothing useful
> > at all.
> 
> I tested different shells and I found out that an exlicit sub shell
> is required to let the shell fork:
> 
> while :; do (:); done

That's still not a fork bomb. While it creates a process every time
through the loop, the process exits before the loop continues, so
you've still got just a few processes. Basicaly, it's still a busy
loop.

A true fork bomb creates an ever-increasing number of processes,
typically by forking copies of itself (which led to them being called
"rabbit jobs" when I first ran into one).

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.