setrlimit always fails

[Patrick Chkoreff]

I'm trying to use setrlimit to impose limits on various resources such
as CPU time and memory.  The call to setrlimit always fails.  I've
distilled this into the following example test.c:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/resource.h>

int main(void)
    {
    struct rlimit rlim;
    rlim.rlim_cur = 1;
    rlim.rlim_max = 1;
    if (setrlimit(RLIMIT_CPU,&rlim) < 0)
        {
        perror("setrlimit");
        exit(1);
        }
    printf("HEY\n");
    while (1)
        {
        }
    printf("BYE\n");
    return 0;
    }

$ gcc test.c
$ ./a.exe
setrlimit: Invalid argument


I have found that the only way to make the setrlimit call succeed is to
use RLIM_INFINITY:

    rlim.rlim_cur = RLIM_INFINITY;
    rlim.rlim_max = RLIM_INFINITY;

But then of course it does not achieve the desired result of timing out
after 1 second.

Any ideas?


-- Patrick