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The patch http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/7/13/226 introduced an RLIMIT_NPROC
check in set_user() to check for NPROC exceeding via setuid() and
similar functions.

Before the check there was a possibility to greatly exceed the allowed
number of processes by an unprivileged user if the program relied on
rlimit only.  But the check created new security threat: many poorly
written programs simply don't check setuid() return code and believe it
cannot fail if executed with root privileges.  So, the check is removed
in this patch because of too often privilege escalations related to
buggy programs.

The NPROC can still be enforced in the common code flow of daemons
spawning user processes.  Most of daemons do fork()+setuid()+execve().
The check introduced in execve() (1) enforces the same limit as in
setuid() and (2) doesn't create similar security issues.

Neil Brown suggested to track what specific process has exceeded the
limit by setting PF_NPROC_EXCE...