Re: How to spawn a server?

[Katie Lucas <katie@fysh.org>]

On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 02:28:09PM +0200, Francesco Orsenigo wrote:
> 
> My game works on a tight server/client system.
> This means that the player usually needs to run only the client.
> But when the player chooses to Host a game, the client program must create a 
> server and connect to it immediatly.
> At the time, the program works this way: as soon as the program is launched, 
> it creates a pipe and a socketpair, then forks.
> Server is controlled with the pipe, and initializes whenever needed.
> When pipe is severed, the server closes.
 
> This seems to have 2 drawbacks:
> 1) A latent server must be always spawned, even if it won't be used.
> That should not be critical, since while latent the server does nothing.
> 2) pipe(), socketpair() and fork() are not very portable; alternative methods 
> would require to spawn the server when is needed, and not at program 
> initialization....
> 
> I was thinking to pipe(), socketpair() and then fork() only when i really 
> need a server, but i don't know how does fork() works...
> If I fork() a program with lots af allocated memory, low-level hardware 
> access, and lots of open descriptors, all this will be copied?

Why not fork, exec the server executable (which will clear out all the
open stuff) and then have the server open a port and have the clients
connect to that?