How to launch proccess with limited memory?

Question

How does one create and launch process (i.e. launch an .exe file) with RAM limitation using c++ and the win32 API?

Which error code will be returned, if the proccess goes beyond the limit?

Answer 1

You can use CreateProcess() to spawn a process.

Once you have done that, you can use SetProcessWorkingSetSize() to attempt to control how much physical memory it uses, but this is more of a really strong suggestion to the VMM than some actual edict that will cause malloc() and new to start failing.

There is no way to say "this process will take 4mb of memory and after that all allocations fail". I mean, you're going to link to win32 dlls and you have no idea what sort of memory usage those things require. If you want your app to only take some certain amount of memory, don't allocate more than that. And don't do things that allocate memory.

Your question regarding the error code makes no sense at all.

Answer 2

By my knowledge there is no such possibility on windows. It would be very useful to have though, for testing and other things.

You have this on java as a JVM uses only a predefined amount of memory, but there its not a feature, but rather a problem ;-)

Answer 3

If you launch a process, you lose control over this process. Just the operating system can control its behavior (memory footprint i.e.) but even in that case I can't imagine how this could be achieved, as jeffamaphone stated, any limitation is at best a suggestion, not a instruction. A process can call external static libraries, COM instances, etc, so I don't imagine how this limit could be verified/enforced.

Answer 4

NT Job objects ( SetInformationJobObject & JOBOBJECT_BASIC_LIMIT_INFORMATION )

Answer 5

Job Objects are the right way to go.

As for an error code, there really isn't one. You create the process (with CreateProcess) and the job (with CreateJobObject), then associate the process with the job object (with AssignProcessToJobObject).

The parent process won't get an error message if the child allocates more than the allowed amount of memory. In fact, the limit will be enforced even if the parent process exits. If the child process tries to allocate more than the allowed amount of memory, the allocation will simply fail.