Re: fork() wait semantics

Eric W. Biederman
2002-10-16T08:34:03Z

Eduardo PXrez <100018135@alumnos.uc3m.es> writes:

> On 2002-10-15 20:07:43 +0200, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 04:58:44PM +0000, Eduardo Pérez wrote:
> > > As an example consider bash. In case of fork() error the program
> > > isn't even run thus causing a fatal error. If fork() waited for
> > > resources to be available there wouldn't be any problem.
> >
> > No, thank you. This happened to me more than once (runaway fetchmail
> > plugins). An error message about a failing fork() indicates
> > immediately that I have too many processes, and I can kill them
> > (thankfully kill is a bash builtin). If bash just waited silently I
> > wouldn't know what to think.
>
> But you are talking about buggy software.
> If you software has bugs don't expect it to work properly.
>
> These fork() semantics are for non-buggy software.

Well that clinches it since there is no non-buggy software we
definitely don't want that behavior.

Eric