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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: fork failures within shell scripts
Message-ID: <2422@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 20-Jul-86 10:13:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.2422
Posted: Sun Jul 20 10:13:20 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jul-86 04:57:46 EDT
References: <104@jpusa1.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Distribution: na
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 6
Keywords: fork, shell

The SVR2 Bourne shell goes into an exponential backoff retry mode
when an attempt to fork fails.  Sometimes this is a good idea and
sometimes it is incredibly stupid (consider what happens on an
overloaded system running several shell scripts; as soon as one
fails to fork, it will probably never succeed until long after
the load drops back to normal).