From: CRDGW2::CRDGW2::MRGATE::"SMTP::CRVAX.SRI.COM::RELAY-INFO-VAX" 3-MAY-1991 02:34:59.59 To: ARISIA::EVERHART CC: Subj: re: Process Quotas -- Bug or Feature ? From: RELAY-INFO-VAX@CRVAX.SRI.COM@SMTP@CRDGW2 To: Everhart@Arisia@MRGATE Received: by crdgw1.ge.com (5.57/GE 1.97) id AA00555; Fri, 3 May 91 02:15:49 EDT Received: From BULLDOG.CS.YALE.EDU ([130.132.1.2]) by CRVAX.SRI.COM with TCP; Thu, 2 MAY 91 20:29:26 PDT Received: from lrw.UUCP by BULLDOG.CS.YALE.EDU via UUCP; Thu, 2 May 91 23:22:41 EDT Message-Id: <9105030322.AA14471@BULLDOG.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: by lrw.UUCP (DECUS UUCP w/Smail); Thu, 2 May 91 23:24:07 EDT Date: Thu, 2 May 91 23:24:07 EDT From: Jerry Leichter To: INFO-VAX@KL.SRI.COM Subject: re: Process Quotas -- Bug or Feature ? We are running a LAVC with two VAX 11/750, a MicroVAX II, a VAXstation II and a VAXstation 3200 with VMS V5.4-1 and a cluster common SYSUAF. The problem now occurs when I log onto the VAXstation 3200. This machine seems to ignore any of the process quotas the user has set in the SYSUAF, i.e. subprocess quota, byte count quota, enqueue quotas etc. are higher than they should be. On the other machines everything works fine. So I'm a bit wondering if this may be a bug in VMS or a feature for systems, on which DECwindows is installed. If this a feature of DECwindows, why does if affect normal text terminals too (VT320). Without playing with your system, it's impossible to know for certain, but I think this is probably what is going on: VMS has a set of SYSGEN parameters, the PQL_xxx parameters, which are associated with various system quotas - PQL is "Process Quota List". The PQL_xxx parameters come in two sets, PQL_Dyyy and PQL_Myyy, where yyy is the name of some quota (for example, TQELM). The PQL_Dyyy parameter defines the default value for the quota; it sets the amount of that quota to be granted to a process if its creator didn't specify a value. The PQL_Myyy parameters, on the other hand, specify the minimum value the related quotas can have, for any process on the system. Any attempt to set a value for a quota lower than the PQL_Myyy parameter specifies simply results in the process being granted the minimum. When a login process gets created, as far as I can tell it receives all its quotas from the PQL_Dyyy parameters. When LOGINOUT uses SYSUAF.DAT to autho- rize a process, it resets all the quotas from the record for the username; but the minima specified by the PQL_Myyy parameters provide lower bounds, whatever the SYSUAF says. DECwindows requires processes to have certain minimum values for quotas that are larger than those for non-DECwindows processes. As part of installing DECwindows you do an AUTOGEN. AUTOGEN recognizes that DECwindows is present on the system and resets the PQL_Myyy parameters. You can actually see the values by looking at the file SYS$SYSTEM:VMSPARAMS.DAT. The first column in the file indicates a particular configuration option; the other columns should be pretty obvious. It's quite true that a non-DECwindows process on a system with DECwindows installed may not need the extra quotas. However, VMS doesn't provide that level of discrimination - the minima apply across all processes on the system. For the most part, DECwindows only modifies minima for parameters that will cost you a little system memory, if that - many of the minima are quite small (e.g., the minimum for FILLM is 8, much smaller than it is likely to be on any real system anyway). The only one that I can see as a potential problem is PRCLM, which is forced to at least 8. It's common to configure accounts with PRCLM=0 to prevent spawning in various kinds of secure accounts. That won't work on a DECwindows system. If this is a problem for you, you should SPR it. -- Jerry