From: Smoko Mr Charles (SMOKOCH@usmc-mccs.org)
Date: Thu Jan 29 2004 - 10:58:06 EST
Dan O'Callaghan [OcallD@cogent-dsn.com] and
Richard.Skelton@infineon.com referred me to the sun
document that says I can set the pidmax in /etc/system.
Several folks said that I should just set my max users higher
or maxpid in /etc/system. My goal is to change the maximum
value a pid may have; not the maximum number of them. In add-
ition this doc says setting maxpid is of no use. So this doc below
is exactly what I am looking for. In addition a user sent a code
snippet that show's that pid_t (from the manpage of getpid(2))
is 4 bytes via the c sizeof directive.
Thanks all,
chuck smoko
<http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/806-4015/6jd4gh8ep?q=maxpid&a=view>
Below is a portion of that document
pidmax
Description
This parameter specifies value of largest possible process ID. Valid
for Solaris 8 and later releases.
pidmax sets the value for the maxpid variable. Once maxpid is set,
pidmax is ignored. maxpid is used elsewhere in the kernel to determine the
maximum process ID and for constraint checking.
Attempts to set maxpid by adding an entry to the /etc/system file
have no effect.
Data Type
Signed integer
Default
30,000
Range
266 to 999,999
Units
Processes
Dynamic?
No. Used only at boot time to set the value of pidmax.
Validation
Value is compared to that of reserved_procs and 999,999. If less
than reserved_procs or greater than 999,999, the value is set to 999,999.
Implicit
max_nprocs range checking ensures that max_nprocs is always less
than or equal to this value.
When to Change
Changing this parameter is one of the steps necessary to enable
support for more than 30,000 processes on a system.
Commitment Level
Unstable
Original Question:
> I was wondering if the maximum process id number (maxpid) for
> Solaris 8 could be changed. It appears that that processes
> numbers cycle at 29999. Not that it matters; I think Linux uses
> somewhere around 64k for the max process id number. We have an
> application that uses the pid when generating temporary files and
> recompiling is not an easy option. Setting a maxpid of 64k or
> more would help. I found this doc at sun's documentation site
> that mentions maxpid, but I cannot find any that mention changing
> it.
>
> http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/806-7009/6jftnqsk5?q=maxpid&a=view
>
> It does seem silly that the pid's are restricted to such a narrow
> range. I speculate may be a backwards compatibility issue so
> that apps that used a signed short int for the pid will not have
> to be recompiled.
>
> Thanks in advance and I will summarize,
> chuck
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