Man Fork en anglais
FORK(2)                    Linux Programmer's Manual                   FORK(2)



 

NAME


       fork - create a child process

 

SYNOPSIS


       #include 
       #include 

       pid_t fork(void);

 

DESCRIPTION






       fork()  creates  a  child  process that differs from the parent process
       only in its PID and PPID, and in the fact  that  resource  utilizations
       are set to 0.  File locks and pending signals are not inherited.

       Under  Linux,  fork()  is implemented using copy-on-write pages, so the
       only penalty that it incurs is the time and memory required  to  dupli-
       cate  the  parent's  page tables, and to create a unique task structure
       for the child.

 

RETURN VALUE


       On success, the PID of the child process is returned  in  the  parent's
       thread  of execution, and a 0 is returned in the child's thread of exe-
       cution.  On failure, a -1 will be returned in the parent's context,  no
       child process will be created, and errno will be set appropriately.

 

ERRORS


       EAGAIN fork()  cannot  allocate  sufficient memory to copy the parent's
              page tables and allocate a task structure for the child.

       EAGAIN It was not possible to create a new process because the caller's
              RLIMIT_NPROC  resource  limit  was  encountered.  To exceed this
              limit, the process must have either  the  CAP_SYS_ADMIN  or  the
              CAP_SYS_RESOURCE capability.

       ENOMEM fork()  failed  to  allocate  the  necessary  kernel  structures
              because memory is tight.

 

CONFORMING TO


       SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

 

EXAMPLE


       See pipe(2) and wait(2).

 

SEE ALSO


       clone(2), execve(2), setrlimit(2), unshare(2), vfork(2), wait(2), capa-
       bilities(7)



Linux 2.6.6                       2004-05-27                           FORK(2)