[plug] xargs, "Argument list too long"

[Mike Holland]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, James Devenish wrote:

> maximum). Having no limit of any form, or an maximum that can be
> dynamically increased by general users, might be fine for single-user
> machines but would be a bit of a liability on multi-user machines and
> network hosts.

I cant figure why that is. The argument list (and env.vars) would be just 
a block of memory that gets conserved in an execve() call.
So long as they fit in the new process stack, whats the problem?
I'm looking at exec.c - why do kerenl hackers not believe in comments?
There is one:

from binfmts.h:
/*
 * MAX_ARG_PAGES defines the number of pages allocated for arguments
 * and envelope for the new program. 32 should suffice,

Famous last words!

-- 
 "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out
to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more." - RF Scott