Parent process

Computing software instance that has created one or more child processes In computing, a parent process is a process that has created one or more child processes. Unix-like systems In Unix-like operating systems, every process except process 0 (the swapper) is created when another process executes the fork() system call. The process that invoked fork is the parent process and the newly created process is the child process. Every process (except process 0) has one parent process, but can have many child processes. The operating system kernel identifies each process by its process identifier. Process 0 is a special process that is created when the system boots; after forking a child process (process 1), process 0 becomes the swapper process (sometimes also known as the "idle task"). Process 1, known as init, is the ancestor of every other process in the system. Linux In the Linux kernel, in which there is a very slim difference between processes and POSIX threads, there are two kinds of parent processes, namely real parent and parent. Parent is the process that receives the SIGCHLD signal on child's termination, whereas real parent is the thread that actually created this child proce