this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 3 points 3 days ago

On my computer, this pushes one core to ~60%, eats ~40MB of memory over the course of about a minute and then segfaults.

I did make one small change to the condition which would mean that it would bail out if available memory got too low, but 40MB barely even registered so it was basically true the whole time. In retrospect, I probably should have been monitoring process count instead (or done both), but I guess I got away with it.

As OP says, you need to create subprocesses with & to cause real problems.

*Bash 5.2.15 / LMDE6 / who knows what other factors. Try these things at your own risk. Or better, just don't.