From: Lars Wirzenius (wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI)
Date: 09/06/92


From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius)
Subject: Re: Background processes not dying on parent exit
Date: 6 Sep 1992 22:51:38 GMT

I said that children shouldn't be killed when their parent dies.

person@plains.NoDak.edu (Brett G Person ) asks in reply:
>Why is it done this way? This is kinda sloppy. I know that
>somethimes unix will forget to kill one of my processes, but it
>doesn't seem to happen very often. Why would linux be designed this
>way?

As far as I am aware, no Unix kills children when the parent dies. I
see no reason why processes should be killed for arbitrary reasons like
some other process dying.

Also, do you think that the following should work:

        #!/bin/sh
        (sleep 10; echo 10) &
        (sleep 5; echo 5) &

A similar thing happens with some program, e.g. some mailers leave a
background child process behind to do the real work, so that the user
doesn't need to wait as long for a prompt. Should this be impossible?

Note that doing nohup isn't the answer: it could still be a good idea
for some leftover child processes of this kind to be killed on hangup.