On-the-Fly Process Resource Quarantine for System Stabilization

Abstract

Several programs demand large memory allocation to execute their tasks. Normally, the demands are based on intentions of program designers, users, and system administrators. Sometimes, however, faulty programs or malicious programs demand large memory without the intentions. These unexpected large memory demands may cause system instability. Generally, operating systems have resource limitation mechanisms to avoid such system instability. Linux has several resource limitation mechanisms. However, the mechanisms of Linux have several challenges to realize both of system usability and system stability. In this paper, we will propose an alternative resource limitation mechanism in Linux to resolve the issues of existing resource limitation mechanism. With the proposed method, operating systems can detect processes with a flow that consumes too much memory and limit their usable resources dynamically, i.e., the proposed method can protect the system stability from faulty or malicious programs. The results of evaluation experiments show that the proposed method is effective to keep the system stability.