Every system call that can return an error condition must have that
error condition checked.
One reason is that nearly all system calls require limited system resources,
and users can often affect resources in a variety of ways.
Setuid/setgid programs can have limits set on them through calls such as
setrlimit(3) and nice(2).
External users of server programs and CGI scripts
may be able to cause resource exhaustion simply by making a large number
of simultaneous requests.
If the error cannot be handled gracefully, then fail open as discussed earlier.
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