Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 16, 2013 19:50 UTC (Sat) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
In reply to: Which init system for Debian? by smurf
Parent article: Which init system for Debian?

Well, one could argue that the right way to fix this is to make PIDs 64-bit, so that they never have to be reused. Of course doing this without breaking binary compatibility would be non-trivial.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Dec 8, 2013 16:27 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Doing this without irritating everyone who had to type in or read PIDs would be even more non-trivial!

Imagine, over a noisy phone line:

"What PID is that?"
"41921160436"
"*sigh*"

(well, OK, that machine has been forking up a storm for implausibly long. But still. :) )

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Dec 8, 2013 17:25 UTC (Sun) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

Isn't the actual limit in linux ~2^22? ;)

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Dec 8, 2013 19:18 UTC (Sun) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

$ echo 41921160436 >/tmp/annoying_process

… though the main reason against increasing the PID space that much is the ps output's legibility – and human limitations: present-day PIDs 14127 and 14217 are too similar already, so how would you distinguish between 41921160436 and 41921106436?