At 05:14 PM 2/15/00 +0000, David Brownlee wrote:
>	Set the close-on-exec flag on the descriptors and use fork().
>	See fcntl().
>
>
>		David/absolute


This seems to have done the trick. Thanks. I'm still curious why the other
scheme didn't work, but for now it's on to other things. 

Cheers,
Kim

>
>On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Kim Ludwig wrote:
>
>> First of all, I am using NetBSD 1.3.3 and gcc 2.7.2.2+myc2
>> 
>> While inside one running program (call it A), I want to create another,
>> totally independent, process (call it B), such that process A could exit or
>> be killed and restarted without affecting B in any way.
>> 
>> One way I understand to do this is to have A call fork(). Then, the child
>> process, B, should call execv() to execute the desired program.
>> 
>> One complication is that process A has several listening sockets as well as
>> a couple other socket connections open at the time it wants to create B. I
>> understand that, upon fork(), process B inherits *copies* of all those open
>> descriptors, and so before proceeding with the execv() call, I should first
>> close() all those open descriptors in process B.
>> 
>> BUT, when I do it this way, all of process A's descriptors seem to get
>> closed too, and A can no longer communicate on its sockets. Bad.
>> 
>> On the other hand, if I do NOT close all the descriptors in B, then if A
>> exits and is restarted while B is still alive, then A generates BIND
>> FAILED--ADDRESS ALREADY IN USE errors when it tries to open its sockets.
>> 
>>  Other things I have tried:
>> 
>> - Using vfork() instead of fork(), but not closing any descriptors. Seems
>> to have the same BIND FAILED problem.
>> 
>> - Making B into a daemon by calling fork() twice, each time having the
>> parent exit. (This comes from  "Unix Network Programming, Vol 1" by W.
>> Richard Stevens.) Even after all this, B still seems to have a hold on A's
>> descriptors.
>> 
>> What am I missing here? Please help.
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>