#4399 NORM Never A: oatc (anti-theft daemon) burns RAM unnecessarily

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#4399: oatc (anti-theft daemon) burns RAM unnecessarily
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 Reporter:  gnu          |       Owner:  krstic        
     Type:  defect       |      Status:  new           
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Never Assigned
Component:  security     |     Version:                
 Keywords:  performance  |    Verified:  0             
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 The anti-theft daemon is what is left from the activation, security, and
 anti-theft code that runs in a RAMdisk when the kernel first boots.  It
 runs as PID 1 in a running XO.  Examining /proc/1/smaps reveals that it
 occupies roughly 5MB (either as pageable RAM, and/or as ramdisk contents
 that can't be deleted because they are in use).

 Since RAM is precious and can't be swapped or otherwise reclaimed, this is
 a pretty serious performance problem.  Jim Gettys suggests two obvious
 improvements:

 (1)  When anti-theft is not in use, exec something tiny instead of this
 (perhaps /etc/init, I gamely suggest).

 (2)  5 megs is huge for a process that sits idle most of the time and
 talks on the net a little bit and bricks the machine when told to.
 Rewrite that little piece in C?

 I also suggest:

 (3)  The python executable and libraries in pid 1 are not sharing physical
 RAM with the other python executables currently running, because they are
 remnants left from the initial RAMdisk, rather than files from the normal
 root filesystem.  Probably large parts of the heap can also be discarded
 by exec-ing a new python interpreter with just the antitheft script, after
 the rest of the ramdisk has run.

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Ticket URL: <https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4399>
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