OS/X fork() officially broken?

[Volker Lendecke]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 10:19:00AM -0400, Scott Lovenberg wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Volker Lendecke
> <Volker.Lendecke at sernet.de> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > Via the discussion thread on
> > https://lwn.net/Articles/518306/ I found the link to the
> > OS/X fork manpage:
> > http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/system/conceptual/manpages_iphoneos/man2/fork.2.html
> >
> > Despite the link pointing at ios, the text says it is the
> > OS/X manpage for fork(2).
> >
> > Look at the CAVEATS section. That is likely one of the more
> > technical reasons why Apple switched to something but Samba.
> > For us it does not make any sense at all to even try to
> > revive smbd on OS/X in its current architecture.
> >
> > With best regards,
> >
> > Volker Lendecke
> >
> 
> If I understand correctly from that man page, they're using a version
> of fork() from BSD?  Doesn't BSD run Samba just fine?

The provide a fork() call just fine. What they also say is
that you essentially have to exec() immediately after that,
something Samba does not do and probably will not for the
foreseeable future. As one of the commenters on lwn said:
"fork() is hard", speculating that Apple does not care about
that anymore.

With best regards,

Volker Lendecke

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