Re: Memory management in Kernel 2.4.x

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, 2002-05-27 at 22:33, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
> On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 02:22:22PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Well, if you can't fork a new process because that would push you into
> > overcommit, then you usually can't actually do anything useful on the
> > machine.
> 
> Just use vfork or clone + exec.  It's faster and uses less memory.

In the general case a fork doesn't cause too much overcommit. Most of
the binary is mapped read-only as is a lot of the library space. Since
its read only and backed by a file it has zero cost. If you mprotect it
then you pay at mprotect time