[R] Restricting R session

[Uwe Ligges]

On 11.01.2012 21:13, Antonio Rodriges wrote:
> Thank you, Uwe,
>
> below are my comments
>
>>> In particular, how to prohibit some set of functions, for example,
>>> from "base" package?
>>
>>
>> You can't: R is free software.
>
> This does not imply it must be inflexible and unsuitable for cloud services

The opposite: It implies it is extremely flexible in the sense a user 
can do anything the OS allows, e.g by installation of packages that 
reimplement functions you had prohibited before. I don't see why this is 
related to cloud services. In a cloud process, again, the user can do as 
much with R as the OS allows, hence you may want to run it in a virtual 
machine in such a case.

Uwe Ligges

>> Well, of course you could build your own
>> version of R that did not ship those functions. Anyway, typical restrictions
>> are handled by settig permissions on the file system and/or arrange quotas
>> for space / memory / CPU resources.
>
> Disk quotas and permissions are helpful in case when R function
> depends on disk access. For other functions something more special
> must be devised.
>
>>> How to limit session operating memory and CPU time?
>> Ask he manual of your operating system.
>
> The most straightforward Linux command is ulimit which limits
> CPU/memory per shell/user/system wide. However, sessions are child
> processes of R and this requires testing whether limits will cover all
> sessions or each session separately.