Non-random PIDs

[Dave Ihnat]

On Sun, Aug 01, 2004 at 05:36:36PM -0400, Jason Dixon wrote:
> Nevertheless, you have to ask yourself, what advantage is there to
> generating a pid as pid+1, rather than via entropy?  If all things
> are equal, I would think that random PID generation is simply a
> better design.

There is, actually, some use in knowing that PIDs are assigned in an
incremental fashion.  Simply by glancing at a ps output, the savvy sysadmin
can identify very old processes.

Small, perhaps, but no smaller than any advantage a random PID may give.

Cheers,
-- 
	Dave Ihnat
	ignatz at dminet.com