On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 05:03:01PM -0500, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> > And to refer to Carl's post, there do exist OS's that will handle an
> > out-of-memory condition, but they aren't of the Unix family.  VMS or NSK,
> > and maybe MPE will, I believe.  
> 
> I don't know anything about NSK or MPE; but Alan Cox claims he can crash VMS
> (and any other OS) with a carefully constructed memory attack. 

Lots of people claim lots of things.  .  I thought the question was whether or
not an OS existed that will avoid or trap out-of-memory conditions, implication
being those that might arise in "normal" circumstances -- running programs.  
Answer:  yes, there is such a beast.

If you're saying that no OS will trap *every possible* out-of-memory
condition, well, maybe.  (And certainly not many.)  But it gets closer to 
saying "I can crash a system by hooking it's AC plug up to an arc welder." :)

--
I used to like HP before computers, and once I even liked Compaq,
but I liked DEC better than HP and Compaq put together.