From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jun 17 21:49:30 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA25959 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:49:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kithrup.com (kithrup.com [205.179.156.40]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA25954 for ; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:49:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from sef@localhost) by kithrup.com (8.6.8/8.6.6) id VAA06907; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:49:26 -0700 Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:49:26 -0700 From: Sean Eric Fagan Message-Id: <199606180449.VAA06907@kithrup.com> To: michaelh@cet.co.jp, smpatel@umiacs.umd.edu Subject: Re: vfork cow? Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >1- Many old programs use vfork()'s "feature" of allowing the child access > to the parent's address space. While it's plain wrong for a > program to exploit this side-effect of vfork(), it's already done > (and hard to undo). Any such program will not work under FreeBSD, because it doesn't do this! Also, I don't think "many" programs ever depended on this. csh did, and it was fixed a long time ago. (The fact that the 4.2 allowed the child process to modify its parent's memory was a bug, and was listed as such in the manpage.) Sean.