CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxprocesslinux-kernelpid
rolen
rolen

Reputation: 47

PID re-use, edge case?

I read that PID reuse is done when process is zombie and was waited for.

What happens if I forked hundreds of processes and just killed the parent without waiting for them? I know they will be children of init process but who will call wait on them? (else we are in trouble and limited with PIDs).

Upvotes: 0

Views: 105

Answers (1)

Arkadiusz Drabczyk
Arkadiusz Drabczyk

Reputation: 12528

I know they will be children of init process but who will call wait on them?

init (process with PID 1) will reap all of its child processes, including adpoted zombie processes. As it says on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process

init periodically executes the wait system call to reap any zombies with init as parent.

Upvotes: 3

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