Re: Interesting race condition...

Rob Landley
2004-07-24T08:16:48Z

On Friday 23 July 2004 05:01, P. Benie wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Rob Landley wrote:
> > I just saw a funky thing. Here's the cut and past from the xterm...
> >
> > [root@(none) root]# ps ax | grep hack
> > 9964 pts/1 R 0:00 grep hack HOSTNAME= SHELL=/bin/bash TERM=xterm
> > HISTSIZE=1000 USER=root
> > LS_COLORS=no=00:fi=00:di=00;34:ln=00;36:pi=40;33:so=00;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=
> >40;33;01:or=01;05;37;41:mi=01;05;37;41:ex=00;32:*.cmd=00;32:*.exe=00;32:*.
> >com=00;32:*.btm=00;32:*.bat=00;32:*.sh=00;32:*.csh=00;32:*.tar=00;31:*.tgz
> >= [root@(none) root]# ps ax | grep hack
> > 9966 pts/1 S 0:00 grep hack
> >
> > Seems like some kind of race condition, dunno if it's in Fedore Core 1's
> > ps or the 2.6.7 kernel or what...
>
> The race is in the shell's pipeline - the processes don't start at exactly
> the same time, and sometimes ps has completed before the shell has
> started grep. This is the expected behaviour.

It's expected behavior for PS to show a process's environment variables as
part of its command line?

> Peter

Rob
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