Who is responsible for a retry (was Re: Is System V.4 fork reliable?)
Boyd Roberts
boyd at necisa.ho.necisa.oz
Tue Jul 31 09:56:00 AEST 1990
When fork() fails with EAGAIN it fails for a good reason.
How many lines of user-mode code does it take to code up retries?
About 20.
It would seem that there is some consensus to change the semantics of
fork() to retry. This would break a critical interface. System calls
do one thing, and one thing well. A trivial addition to user-mode programs
is what is required, and NOT the re-definition of a well defined critical
interface.
Leave the kernel and C library alone. Write your own re-trying fork().
NAME
bork() - spawn new process with exponential backoff on failure
SYNOPSIS
int bork(retries)
int retries;
...
Boyd Roberts boyd at necisa.ho.necisa.oz.au
``When the going gets wierd, the weird turn pro...''
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