Subject: Re: Real vfork() (was: third results)
To: None <tech-kern@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
List: tech-kern
Date: 04/16/1998 00:04:47
On Thu, 16 Apr 1998 02:07:34 -0400 (EDT)
woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods) wrote:
> But that's wrong. See my previous post quoting the specification from
> opengroup.com's on-line documents. kre's rule of thumb would meet a
> specification that's much closer to the truth.
Ah, yes... I just reread that part of my copy of XPG4.2.. yes, it's
a "MAY" not a "MUST".
> I'm not sure so many people would actually notice. Certainly not on a
> modern machine with several active users. We'd need actual numbers to
> prove this one way or another, and I'd like to see throughput numbers in
> the face of lots of concurrent activity, which means using a much more
> scientific benchmark than just one (or more concurrent) "make build"
> runs.
Well, I noticed... I'm a software developer, and I build LOTS of kernels.
Take that as you will, but I think that "software developer" is one of the
several "typical" uses of NetBSD.
Or, take the example of a big mail server; if you have lots of sendmail
processes running, forking, execing support programs, etc., they will benefit
from vfork(2) (and we all know how large sendmail can get :-).
Jason R. Thorpe thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
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