What's the disadvantage of orphan process

Question

Hi

When child process is still under execution and parent exits , child becomes orphan process

Orphan process gets reparenting done by os and gets new parent as init process of linux having id 1.

What's wrong on this? Child process entry to be removed from process table info is now done by init process in place of original parent. Is this any issue in so ?

Answer 1

Hi Ketan,
I'm not sure which you were asking for

Whether there was any issue with how Linux handles orphan processes, or

Whether there was any issue when a system has orphan process(es) running.

For the latter, I found this on a web search,

https://www.scaler.com/topics/operating-system/zombie-and-orphan-process-in-os/

You may need to scroll down the page a bit, it's somewhere near the "Conclusion" section.

Not sure what to comment on the former. Better leave it for the experts :)

Answer 2

Question is about orphan process issue.

What happens and why it is worst when we have orphan processes.

My concern is below :
Parent process say 1234 has child process 1235. When 1235 is executing and 1234 completes execution, 1235 becomes orphan. Now , init process 1 becomes parent of 1235. In any case , 1235 has either process 1 or process 1234 as parent. This parent will take care of removing child process id from process table info. What's big deal and why we are so much concern about orphan then?