Re: /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max issues

From: William Lee Irwin III (wli_at_holomorphy.com)
Date: 09/13/04

  • Next message: Aurélien GÉRÔME: "Re: iMac G3 IPv6 issue"
    Date:	Sun, 12 Sep 2004 16:06:17 -0700
    To: Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>
    
    

    On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 10:13:19AM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
    >> I presumed it was merely cosmetic, so daemons around system startup
    >> will get low pid numbers recognizable by sysadmins. Maybe filtering
    >> process listings for pids < 300 is/was used to find daemons that may
    >> have crashed? I'm not particularly attached to the feature, and have
    >> never used it myself, but merely noticed its implementation was off.

    On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 11:02:29AM -0700, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
    > I always assumed it was an optimization when looking for a new PID
    > after a wrap by trying to skip over the kernel threads. Arguably 300
    > is way too small for larger systems (which might have several thousand
    > kernel threads) and should probably be sized on boot (or when starting
    > userspace) if anyone really cares.

    There's no reason it couldn't be made tunable, though we may want to
    place restrictions on what values are allowed, e.g. reserved_pids > 0
    and reserved_pids < min(BITS_PER_PAGE, pid_max). For that matter, we
    should likely be using proc_dointvec_minmax() for pid_max or otherwise
    a custom strategy function if we need to update bounds on reserved_pids
    and/or reserved_pids in tandem. I suspect this is obscure enough I
    should leave it alone unless someone develops a strong opinion about it.

    -- wli
    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
    the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
    More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
    Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/


  • Next message: Aurélien GÉRÔME: "Re: iMac G3 IPv6 issue"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max issues
      ... > will get low pid numbers recognizable by sysadmins. ... I'm not particularly attached to the feature, ... after a wrap by trying to skip over the kernel threads. ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: Request: I/O request recording
      ... > frequently loaded modules were loaded at system startup. ... > numerous 3rd party optimizers that would analyze the LOAD SVC patterns on your ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: SMP broken on Dell PowerEdge 4100/200 under 2.6.0-testxx?
      ... Well, userspace irqbalancer wasn't running, but it was started and then ... stopped during the system startup. ... LOC: 331292 331291 ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)