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Subject: Re: [PATCH] 2.4.18-rc2 Fix for get_pid hang
From: Paul Larson <plars@austin.ibm.com>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Marcelo Tosati <marcelo@conectiva.com.br>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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Date: 25 Feb 2002 07:41:30 -0600
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On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 18:29, Alan Cox wrote:
> > This was made against 2.4.18-rc2 but applies cleanly against
> > 2.4.18-rc4.  This is a fix for a problem where if we run out of
> > available pids, get_pid will hang the system while it searches through
> > the tasks for an available pid forever.
> 
> Wouldn't it be a much cleaner patch to limit the maximum number of processes
> to less than the number of pids available. You seem to be fixing a non
> problem by adding branches to the innards of a loop.
> 
That was my original thought, but as Rik and WLI already pointed out, it
won't account for process groups, tgids, etc.  This isn't a purely
theoretical problem either, as we have run up against it many times.

Thanks,
Paul Larson

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