Shouldn't debian be configured better by default ?

[Sami Dalouche <debian@ifrance.com>]

Hello everyone,

While I was cleaning my home directory, I saw this program that I compiled.
After that, I launched it and... My X became frozen and then crashed ( I executed the program in an Xterm). I think it's because it used all the memory available...
I don't want to try but what could happen if I'd have run it from a console
? Whould the system crash ?

I think there is a way (or more than one) to be sure a user doesn't crash
the system by using all the memory available.
I've heard a bit about the /etc/limits file but it seems that it's a per
login configuration, which has a lot of disadvantages. I'd like to know if
there is a way to impose GLOBAL/per user limits. If a such {program ;
configuration file } exist, I'd like to know why debian shouldn't be
configured to impose quotas by default. I think it's very disapointing to
let every user crash the system by default :-((

Have you a better idea to avoid this kind of program to crash the system ?

Thank you very much for giving me much infos
----- CUT -----
#include <stdio.h>

char *p;
int main(void)
{
unsigned long j=0;

while(1)
  {
printf ("cheese: %dn",j);
p=(char *) malloc(1024);
j++;
 }
 }
----- CUT -----

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