From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jan 11 8:14: 6 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from acl.lanl.gov (acl.lanl.gov [128.165.147.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 25617154C6 for ; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 08:14:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rminnich@lanl.gov) Received: from mini.acl.lanl.gov (root@mini.acl.lanl.gov [128.165.147.34]) by acl.lanl.gov (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA992207 for ; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 09:13:53 -0700 (MST) Received: from localhost (rminnich@localhost) by mini.acl.lanl.gov (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA01634 for ; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 09:13:53 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: mini.acl.lanl.gov: rminnich owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 09:13:52 -0700 (MST) From: "Ronald G. Minnich" X-Sender: rminnich@mini.acl.lanl.gov To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: rfork() [was: Concept check] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Michael Bacarella wrote: > I'm sorry I missed the discussion on rfork()... but I say this only > because I want to understand. > > What were you thinking? rfork()? Why is it a system call? > > Almost all of the flags it accepts seem like functionality that can easily > be implemented in userspace around fork() (and maybe vfork()). nope. This whole issue is about (let me check :-) ) 4.5 years old. I did the first rfork for freebsd ca. 9/1994, and I can tell you that you can't easily get what it does with userland wrappers. Well, actually, in the general case it's impossible. Just think about that fact that with shared file descriptors, a child can open a socket and the parent can use it, right down to using the same FD #. (And yes, I use this). I don't want to try to emulate that behaviour in userland. Fork and vfork, however, are a subset of rfork. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message