Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2012 12:20:40 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Forks paralysing the CYGWIN system...
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On Sun, Sep 02, 2012 at 03:23:02PM +0000, Walker, Leon E wrote:
>I may be able to shed further light on the fork problems I have been
>experiencing.
>
>I think it has to do with the number of CYGWIN processes on the system
>as I was monitoring during one of the fork storms as it were.
>
>I think the system is running out of a resource such as Process Control
>Blocks or File Control Blocks or file handles or something like that.
>This comes as a bit of surprise because I'm running on 64-bit Windows
>Server 2008 with 8Gb and seemingly has ample resources but then again
>perhaps there is parameter In windows or in CYGWIN to increase the
>limits...  if we can identify which resource is running low?
>
>It also occurred to me whether it was possible to change the CYGWIN
>code so that if the forks fails say for the condition identified
>earlier, would it be possible to instead of issuing a messages and
>possibly disrupting the running script, the code could be modified to
>silently wait internally until the fork succeeds?

Check out the CYGWIN environment varialbe "proc_retry" setting:
http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-cygwinenv.html .  I don't know if
it will address your problem or not but it is worth a try.

Regarding your tweaking of your virus checker: I would be surprised if
just excluding cygwin directories was adequate for working around this
kind of problem.  The virus checker still needs to be hooked into
process creation somehow and that's what screws Cygwin up.

Also, you may not know this, but Cygwin is free software.  Go ahead
and provide a patch if you think you have a way to fix a problem.

cgf

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