Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dsl.pitt.edu!pitt!amanue!oglvee!jr From: jr@oglvee.UUCP (Jim Rosenberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Is System V.4 fork reliable? Message-ID: <563@oglvee.UUCP> Date: 9 Jul 90 14:47:35 GMT References: <561@oglvee.UUCP> <13317@smoke.BRL.MIL> Organization: Oglevee Computer Systems, Connellsville, Pa Lines: 24 gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes: >In article <561@oglvee.UUCP> jr@oglvee.UUCP (Jim Rosenberg) writes: >>(The shell simply reports the bogus message "No more processes". >Actually, the UNIX System V shells that I've encountered do keep retrying >the fork() operation for a while. In fact, somewhere around SVR2.0 the >shell was changed to use an "exponential backoff" algorithm, i.e. the >delay between successive retries was doubled each time until some limit >was hit, at which time the shell would give up with "No more processes". Fascinating. I don't think we're seeing this behavior, but all of our users are either taken straight to our database manager sans shell by .profile or use csh. I bet the exponential backoff was *not* put into csh. This is V.3.1. I don't know when AT&T officially held its nose and blessed csh as a "real" shell, but my impression is that it wasn't until V.3.2. Does csh under V.4 have the exponential backoff? I presume under BSD no such thing is needed. -- Jim Rosenberg #include --cgh!amanue!oglvee!jr Oglevee Computer Systems / / 151 Oglevee Lane, Connellsville, PA 15425 pitt! ditka! INTERNET: cgh!amanue!oglvee!jr@dsi.com / /