View source for Pid

A pid is the [[process]] identification number.  Special pids are [[swapper]] (0) and [[init]] (1).  

=== Random pids ===

[[OpenBSD]]  chooses a random pid number when a new [[process]] is [[fork]]ed, other systems choose the next sequentially available number, and when the maximum pid number is reached the number will wrap around back to the beginning.  This means that pids are recycled and on a busy system it may not take long for a new process to take the pid of another process that just ended.

There are patches for other OSes, including Linux have patches for this (http://www.vanheusden.com/Linux/sp/)