[Beowulf] Re: dealing with lots of sockets

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2008, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> Event driven programming typically uses registered callbacks that 
> are triggered by a central "Event Loop" when events happen. In such 
> a system, one never blocks for anything -- all activity is performed 
> in callbacks, and one simply returns from a callback if one can't 
> proceed further.

And here is one of the problems that event driven programming can't 
really solve: separation between the central event loop and the code 
to run when events happen. fork() allows the newly created process to 
proceed at its own will and possibly doing its own mistakes (like 
buffer overflows) in its own address space - the parent process is not 
affected in any way and this allows f.e. daemons to run their core 
loop with administrative priviledges while the real work can be done 
as a dumb user.

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR, University of Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Phone: +49 6221 54 8869/8240, Fax: +49 6221 54 8868/8850
E-mail: bogdan.costescu at iwr.uni-heidelberg.de