Are child processes created with fork() automatically killed when the parent is killed?

GetFree picture GetFree · Dec 28, 2008 · Viewed 51.1k times · Source

I'm creating child processes with fork() in C/C++.
When the parent process ends (or is killed for some reason) I want all child processes to be killed as well.
Is that done automatically by the system? Or I have to do it myself?

Thanks.


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Answer

Johannes Schaub - litb picture Johannes Schaub - litb · Dec 28, 2008

No. If the parent is killed, children become children of the init process (that has the process id 1 and is launched as the first user process by the kernel).

The init process checks periodically for new children, and waits for them (thus freeing resources that are allocated by their return value).

The question was already discussed with quality answers here: How to make child process die after parent exits?