GNU bug report logs - #14752
sort fails to fork() + execlp(compress_program) if overcommit limit is reached

Previous Next

Package: coreutils;

Reported by: Petros Aggelatos <petrosagg <at> gmail.com>

Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 05:23:01 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Bernhard Voelker <mail <at> bernhard-voelker.de>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>,  Azat Khuzhin <a3at.mail <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 14752 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#14752: [PATCH] sort: print warning when fork() failed for --compress-program
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 09:22:44 -0700

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Anything where you need to interact with the sub process like setting up files
> to communicate etc. is going to have portability issues. Even using execvp()
> is problematic I understand.

As long as the child doesn't touch parent memory that the parent needs, 
it should be OK.  There is a memory leak in execvp in old glibc 
versions, but I expect that isn't something we need to worry about.

Last time I checked, vfork was significantly faster than fork when the 
parent process has a lot of memory, and was still worth using for its 
performance advantages.
This bug report was last modified 9 years and 162 days ago.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.