stupid fork() the waster!!

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hows thing's

ok here is my issue

Im doing a course in computer systems and I’m having trouble understanding the fork () system call and was looking to see if anyone could clarify this.

Ok so for example I am in Linux/UNIX and I type

cp file1 file2

Now I don’t quite understand where fork comes into play. I assume somewhere in the OS files there is a program called cp and this program takes a number or args, namely the files it is to compare. But what is fork doing I mean in layman’s terms.

Could someone if they know, talk about how the computer boots up gets its initial process running then goes about calling fork? I mean in all the OS books they say fork() get called by process A and creates an exact copy of itself [process B the child process] then they go there separate ways. Etc…… OK But what was process A? what did it look like?[ie was it running any programs etc], what was it doing before it called fork. Why do I need to exact process to do the same task? Ahhh this is driving me nuts.

Any help would be great thanks.

optiplexgx270

http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/unix/fork.html

oh and

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_04_02.html

should do it

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Cheers for the info, was googleing this for ages to no avail.


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