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
NASA Ames Research Center                            Home: +1 408 866 1912
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