Messages in this thread |  | | From | Systemkennung Linux <> | Subject | Re: proc fs and shared pids | Date | Fri, 2 Aug 1996 12:50:20 +0200 (MET DST) |
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> Is a 16-bit pid enough? I could imagine wanting some extra bits > to specify what processor node so that it would be easy to find > the process in a Linux supercomputer. (if process migrates, drop > the bits and search all nodes) I could also imagine running out > of pids - BTW, does the kernel check for that or just get stuck? > There are only around 30000 pids, and some systems have that many > processors already.
The kernel can't run out of pids because before that happens the process table, a static array, will overflow. The size of the process table can be configured in <linux/tasks.h> and defaults to 512. If this limits is raised beyond 32768 get_pid() in kernel/fork.c will handle the case of running out of pids.
Though some people are playing with parallel systems under Linux this case is pretty academic ...
Ralf
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