Linux Operating System Source Code: IBM Patches

Paul: This is a fix for a problem where if we run out of available pids, get_pid will hang the system while it searches through the tasks for an available pid forever.

Rajan: get_pid() function takes a long time to find the next available pid once the last pid reaches the PID_MAX. This is due to a constant rescan of the task list while progressing only one pid at time, yielding an O(n**2) problem. This patch (together with Paul's fix) which eliminates the time taken to search for an available pid, by not constantly restarting the search through the entire task list.