Re: Porting vfork()

["Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>]

Chris Wedgwood writes:
> On Wed, Jan 06, 1999 at 08:28:55PM -0600, kernel@draper.net wrote:

>> 2) When the parent can no longer assume (and requires) that the
>>    child will be dispatched and execve prior to the parent
>>    receiving control back from vfork()...  a subtle race condition
>>    porting problem arises.
>
> I can't think of an easy way to make this work...

Linus posted a basic roadmap. Without this, the shared VM is insane.

>> My intent in this thread was to gage the vfork() impact.
> 
> We've go this far without it -- and it is a bit of a hack. I don't
> see why we should need to add it now. We should be able to fix a
> small handful of applications, and almost any OS can use fork()
> without too much penality as most implement COW.

NetBSD has a "Why implement traditional vfork()" page that explains
why they reimplemented vfork(). It seems vfork() is still good.

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/kernel/vfork.html

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