Re: AIX and Interix also do early PID recycling.

[Chet Ramey]

On 7/25/12 8:14 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 09:59:28AM +0200, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
>> OTOH, AFAICT, as long as a PID isn't waitpid()ed for, it isn't reused by 
>> fork().
>> However, I'm unable to find that in the POSIX spec.
> 
> A process that hasn't been waited for should become a zombie, which
> should be sufficient to prevent its PID being reused.  Are you saying
> that AIX and Interix don't have zombies?

No, a slightly different problem.  Bash interprets the Posix text for the
`wait' builtin as guaranteeing that the kernel will wait at least CHILD_MAX
children before reusing a PID, whether they've terminated or not.


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/