limitations of forking on windows

From: Corey_G (corey-nospam_at_test-tools.net)
Date: 06/28/04 

Date: 28 Jun 2004 07:36:44 -0700

I wrote some simple code that forks processes and sends http requests
from the children. I have read the perlfork documentation and
understand that Windows uses "fork umulation" (with threads) rather
than actually forking processes (like you can in *nix). I am
wondering if anyone has any experience of the limitations of how many
processes can be forked? I get memory errors at 10 processes (in
comparison, I can fork several hundred on linux with no problems).

in the perlfork doc: "In the eyes of the operating system,
pseudo-processes created via the fork() emulation are simply threads
in the same process. This means that any process-level limits imposed
by the operating system apply to all pseudo-processes taken together.
This includes any limits imposed by the operating system on the number
of open file, directory and socket handles, limits on disk space
usage, limits on memory size, limits on CPU utilization etc."

I don't see how I could be hitting any limits at such a small number
of processes.

[using ActiveState Perl 5.8 on Win2k)

-Corey Goldberg

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [SLE] maximum nproc value
    ... What's your kernel version, shell you're using, current ulimit ... Just tested again fork bombing the machine I've described by ... No limits were configured. ... The kernel does not prevent users from creating as many processes as ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: fork implementation
    ... Hash: SHA1 ... ramu wrote: ... Then how come the fork() function returns two values? ... It is the operating system that performs the ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: running several interactive programs under C
    ... such as pipe, fork, execve, waitpid, and friends. ... > the way that the calls are made to the operating system. ... What you want to do cannot be done in ANSI C. ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.apps)
  • Re: Problem with KB951748 XP Update
    ... the first place then the poor sods who buy and use this operating system might not have to fork out more money to third party companies for software to plug its holes! ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsupdate)
  • Re: One for the Excel users
    ... fork" and a "resource fork", where the latter told the operating system what ... Don't know what happens in OSX ... ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)