On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Jaromir Dolecek wrote:

> FWIW, I fail to see where anyone explained anything like what you are
> saying. So far, I've seen bad example with thttpd. Generalizing on
> basis of thttpd behaviour isn't correct, IMHO.

Well, that seems like part of the problem. You have a view of what is
proper behavior, and part of that seems to be that running into the
process limit is punishable; if you're running into the limit, you're
mis-behaving.

That has not been the view taken in the past, by a large number of unix
implementations. While it may be the view we all decide to go with, it
will be a change with the past.

Saying a program is, "broken," because it uses what was a perfectly
legitimate programming method before, though, seems judgemental.

I think it's perfectly fine to fork until you can't. The kernel has to
keep track of your process limit, and can politely tell you you've hit it.
Why duplicate that in userland? Also, by doing that, if the kernel limit
is ever changed, you immediately can take advantage of it.

I'm not saying everything should do that, but it sure seems legit for
certain applications.

Take care,

Bill