> will NOT be implemented this way. If this is true, do we really need
> 32 bit PIDs? My Digital Unix system seems to still use 16 bit values,
> and it looks like Solaris does too. As far as I can tell, the only
> limitation this imposes is limiting the maximum number of running processes
> to 32K.
One advantage with 32-bit PIDs is they take a lot longer to wrap
around. They make it harder to exploit security holes involving
wrapping PIDs, and in general minimizes the risk that processes
get mixed up because they reuse PIDs that have been in use
before.
Johan Myréen
jem@iki.fi