Re: PID sequences

Michael Marxmeier (mike@msede.com)
Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:05:39 +0100

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > Always remember, often it is more important to consider not what
> > applications "should" be doing, but rather what on the whole
> > applications and existing code "are" doing.
>
> OpenBSD uses random pid numbers now. If OpenBSD was able to fix their
> userland, so can we.

There is a difference between using random PIDs (which should not
cause a problem) and re-using PIDs. I've seen some shell scripts
which start a child process and then kill it after some time. When
the child exists and the PID has been re-used in the meantime, this
would subtly break. Agreed this is a somewhat broken as it relies
on some time frame before PIDs are re-used but this is safe with
the current aproach.

Michael

-- 
Michael Marxmeier           Marxmeier Software GmbH
E-Mail: mike@msede.com      Suedstrasse 58
Voice : +49 202 2431440     42119 Wuppertal, Germany
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