CPU Core spillage?

[Sarduk]

A common problem in shared hosting environments is where a user uses a malfunctioning script of some sort and it runs wild. Say this is a PHP script, so in this case it is one Apache thread by my understanding.

Am I correct in assuming that this one thread will only be able to abuse just one core, because the errant script is one thread, thus leaving the other cores of the server untouched?

What other ways and means are you currently practising to ensure resources aren't swallowed by an user-gone-wild in a shared environment?

Thanks,

 

[Bes]

I think you are right regarding core usage.

Is there nothing that can be done with nice to control the parent process (i.e the server's PHP parser), hence stop CPU chewing scripts degrading performance too much?

 

[SiriusB]

You could create a script to check the amount of CPU being used, and if it is higher than youd expect for a certain period of time you could kill that process.