rolling over pids

[hictio]

i`ve noticed something very interesting, to me at least. my linux box is up for 22 days, and i`ve taking as a habit to monitor continuosly the processes, via the ps -aux command.
what i saw today left totally stunned. the pid flipped back into 0, the last time i saw that, last night, the pids were to about 32447, and today they up to 432 or so.
is that the common rule? a day in linux, is a day in disneyland.

[mikek147]

Yes. During the day, processes are constantly being started and stoped, as you've seen. When the PID reaches some maximum count, the number rolls over back to zero. Shared memory nodes are handled the same way. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[hictio]

thanks a lot mike, it`s truly amazing to find out such things. i believe that roll back, but they must start from number 2, right, since pid number 1 init.