eatmemory

eatmemory.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Spawn a process that eats memory by the gigabyte. 
# Useful for testing ulimits and other such nonsense.
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <gigabytes>"
    exit 1
fi

gigabytes_to_allocate=$1
bytes_to_allocate=$((gigabytes_to_allocate * 1024 * 1024 * 1024))

echo "Allocating $gigabytes_to_allocate GB of memory...Ctrl-C to exit"

</dev/zero head -c $bytes_to_allocate | tail