Hi, The book Linux Kernel Development mentions a certain overhead which is reduced in linux because the child is made to run first after it is forked (instead of the parent) and if the child executes the exec system call. Quoting Pg 32 (2nd edition): "In do_fork() the child is woken up and run. Deliberately the kernel runs the child process first. In the common case of the child simply calling exec() immediately, this eliminates any copy-on-write overhead that would occur if the parent ran first and began writing to the address space" How does running exec() in child more efficient than having copy-on-write trigger in the parent? Let me know if my question is clear, or if I should rephrase. Thanks! -Joel -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ