FORK(2) — HP-UX

NAME

fork − create a new process

SYNOPSIS

int fork ()

DESCRIPTION

Fork causes creation of a new process. The new process (child process) is an exact copy of the calling process (parent process). This means the child process inherits the following attributes from the parent process:

environment

close-on-exec flag (see exec(2))

signal handling settings (i.e., SIG_DFL, SIG_IGN, function address)

set-user-ID mode bit

set-group-ID mode bit

profiling on/off status (see profil(2))

nice value (see nice(2))

all attached shared memory segments (see shmop(2))

process group ID

tty group ID (see exit(2) and signal(2))

trace flag (see ptrace(2) request 0)

current working directory

root directory

file mode creation mask (see umask(2))

file size limit (see ulimit(2))

real-time priority (see rtprio(2))

saved process group ID

The child process differs from the parent process in the following ways:

The child process has a unique process ID.

The child process has a different parent process ID (i.e., the process ID of the parent process).

The child process has its own copy of the parent’s file descriptors. Each of the child’s file descriptors shares a common file pointer with the corresponding file descriptor of the parent.

All semadj values are cleared (see semop(2)).

Process locks, text locks and data locks are not inherited by the child (see plock(2)).

The child process’s utime, stime, cutime, and cstime are set to 0; see times(2). The time left until an alarm clock signal is reset to 0, and all interval timers are set to 0 (disabled).

Note that standard I/O buffers are duplicated in the child. Thus, if you fork after a buffered I/O operation that was not flushed, you may get duplicate output.

Vfork is provided as a higher performance version of fork on some systems. See vfork(2) for details.

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, fork returns a value of 0 to the child process and returns the process ID of the child process to the parent process. Otherwise, a value of −1 is returned to the parent process, no child process is created, and errno is set to indicate the error.

The parent and child processes resume execution immediately after the fork call; they are identified by the value returned by fork.

ERRORS

Fork will fail and no child process will be created if one or more of the following are true:

[EAGAIN] The system-imposed limit on the total number of processes under execution would be exceeded.

[EAGAIN] The system-imposed limit on the total number of processes under execution by a single user would be exceeded.

[ENOMEM] Fork will fail if there is not enough swapping and/or physical memory to create the new process.

AUTHOR

Fork was developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories and the University of California, Berkeley California, Computer Science Division, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

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