I did that once to an old Coherent system for fun. while (1) {fork();}

(Anybody remember Coherent? Linux ate their lunch in the worst way.)

The system locked up tight as a drum, until I ctrl-c'd out of the starting parent process, at which point it was fine.

Sending the same bomb into the background, though, killed it dead - couldn't get a kill off at the shell prompt fast enough.

I just checked the Coherent manual - looks like they didn't have a ulimit implemented.

(Anybody remember the Coherent manual? Totally comprehensive, it still puts to shame a lot of the stuff published today.)

Peace,
-McD