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From: Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@teledomenet.gr>
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Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 10:22:15 +0300
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Cc: nospam@mgedv.net, Frank Steinborn <steinex@nognu.de>
Subject: Re: kern.randompid: jot generation senseful?
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On Tuesday 09 May 2006 17:13, Frank Steinborn wrote:
> Nikos Vassiliadis wrote:
> > Isn't kern.randompid a boolean? TRUE or FALSE?
>
> No.
>
> > It is just on or off. 1 means PIDs are random.
> > 0 means PIDs are sequential. to be exact, everything
> > not being 0, is TRUE.
>
> That is not true. Peter Pentchev once wrote:
>
> "The kern.randompid sysctl is not a boolean flag, but an estimate of
> the random value that will be added to each newly created pid. For
> more information, read the comments in src/sys/kern/kern_fork.c before
> the sysctl_kern_randompid() function (around line 150). The function
> itself ignores sysctl settings of less than 2."
>

Excuse my ignorance. It was an unlucky guess...