From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752437AbXCIAbJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Mar 2007 19:31:09 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752536AbXCIAbJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Mar 2007 19:31:09 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:58990 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752437AbXCIAbH (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Mar 2007 19:31:07 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Roland McGrath To: Oleg Nesterov X-Fcc: ~/Mail/linus Cc: Andrew Morton , "linux-os (Dick Johnson)" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Kernel threads In-Reply-To: Oleg Nesterov's message of Thursday, 8 March 2007 19:38:44 +0300 <20070308163844.GA6638@tv-sign.ru> Emacs: ballast for RAM. Message-Id: <20070309003100.9893B180063@magilla.sf.frob.com> Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 16:31:00 -0800 (PST) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Your change seems fine to me. I certainly concur that it seems insane for init to be responsible for tasks created magically inside the kernel. The history I've found says that the setting to SIGCHLD was introduced as part of "v2.5.1.9 -> v2.5.1.10", without detailed commentary in the log. This was probably before the auto-reaping semantics worked as they do now. So like the man said, at the time, it seemed the logical thing to do. To be paranoid, I wouldn't make this change in any stable kernel series. It changes behavior visible to userland (init) from how it has been consistently for five years, so, who knows, something might notice. The old behavior is pretty harmless, albeit changing it seems both preferable and harmless. Thanks, Roland