There is a difference between threads and processes. Processes have all their
own resources (heap, stack, registers, etc.) and they communicate using
Interprocess Communication (pipes, signals, etc.). Threads share resources all
under one process, but each thread has it's own stack and registers. There are
two kinds of threads, kernel threads and user space threads. Kernel threads are
multiprocessor friendly but have considerable overhead that slows performance.
User space threads (or fibers) are faster since the program regulates the
scheduling of execution. Mozilla may use multiple threads, but unless you have
thread support built into ps and use the -m option, it won't show threads. And
kill can only kill processes, not threads directly. So when he kills
mozilla-bin, he is killing processes, not threads.

More info: http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/software/threading.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-kclug@marauder.illiana.net
> [mailto:owner-kclug@marauder.illiana.net]On Behalf Of Jason Clinton
> Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 1:52 PM
> To: David, InfoKwik Internet Solutions
> Cc: kclug@kclug.org
> Subject: Re: Mozilla
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> David, InfoKwik Internet Solutions wrote:
>
> |This is a question concerning Mozilla 1.0. Whenever I launch Mozilla I have
> |noticed it launches 6 child processes all called "mozilla-bin", I can kill
> |all but 2 of the processes and it runs just fine. Apparently the others are
> |not needed.
> |
> |My question is, does anybody know if there is a way to change a file
> |somewhere to only launch the required 2 processes. I have searched through
> |google.com/linux and also the mozilla site and did not see anything on
> this.
> |
> |Thanks, Dave
> |
> The other processes are init threads and by killing them, you're
> reducing Mozilla's capacity to multitask, although, in theory they
> should respaw if needed. Additionally, the threads shouldn't be taking
> up any additional memory or resource due to the new threading in 2.4
> kernels.
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