Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!blume
From: blume@netmbx.UUCP (Heiko Blume)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: for(;;) fork();
Message-ID: <2464@netmbx.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 89 17:12:02 GMT
Reply-To: blume@netmbx.UUCP (Heiko Blume)
Organization: netmbx Public Access Unix, Berlin, West Germany
Lines: 20

i recently caused some bad load plus angry root on this machine 
(286 xenix 2.2.1) because i compiled the wrong thing by chance.
it was the common process well
main() {
	for (;;) fork();
}
which, of course, caused the no more processes message. i thought
'no problem', hung up the phone and redialed. the beasts were still
running ! and it was impossible to kill them because kill seems
to be too slow (one syscall for each pid) to that effect that the
forkers had enough time to spawn again before all of em got the signal.
the machine had to be rebooted.
the question is: why did they survive the logout ? they were not nohup.
(don't try this if you can't reboot, it's a real pain for the machine).
perhaps they could have been killed if the kill would run at top priority ?
-- 
Heiko Blume,Seekorso 29,D-1000 Berlin 22,VOICE=(+49 30)365 55 71,BBS=()365 75 01
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