Threads and fork(). How can I deal with that? [duplicate]

Answer 1

The basic thumb rules, according to various internet articles like ( http://www.linuxprogrammingblog.com/threads-and-fork-think-twice-before-using-them , fork in multi-threaded program ) are:

1. (Main) Process[0] Monothread --> fork() --> (Child) Process[1] Multithreaded: OK!
   If Process[1] crashes or messes around with memory it won't touch address space of Process[0] (unless you use shared R/W memory... but this is another topic of its own).
   In Linux by default all fork()ed memory is Copy On Write. Given that Process[0] is monothreaded, when we invoke fork() all possible mutual exclusion primitives should be generally in an unlocked state.

2. (Main) Process[0] Multithreaded --> fork() --> (Child) Process[1] Mono/Multithread: BAD!
   If you fork() a Multithreaded process your mutexes and many other thread synchronization primitives will likely be in an undefined state in Process[1]. You can work around with pthread_atfork() but if you use libraries you might as well roll a dice and hope to be lucky. Because generally you don't (want to) know the implementation details of libraries.

The advantages of fork() into a multithreaded process are that you could manipulate/read/aggregate your data quicker (in the Child process), without having to care about stability of the process you fork() from (Main). This is useful if your main process has a dataset of a lot of memory and you don't want to duplicate/reload it to safely process the data in another process (Child). This way the original process is stable and independent from the data aggregation/manipulation process (fork()ed).

Of course this means that the original process will generally be slower than it might be if developed in multithreaded fashion. But again, this is the price you might want to be paying for more stability.

If instead your main process is multithreaded, refrain from using fork(). It's going to be a proper mess to implement it in a stable way.

Cheers

Answer 2

On Linux, threads are implemented in terms of processes. In other words, threads are really just a fork() with mostly shared memory, instead of completely copy-on-write memory. What this means, is that when you use fork() in a thread (main or other), you end up copying the entire shared memory space of all of the threads, and the thread specific storage of the thread you call fork() from.

Now all of this sounds good, but that doesn't mean that this is what will happen or work well. If you want to make a cloned process, try to do a fork before starting any other threads, and then use read-only virtual memory to keep the forked process up to date with current memory values.

So although it may work, I just suggest testing, and try to find another way first. And be prepared for a lot of:

Segmentation fault