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answer: direct
beat: system-design
source: 1 article · updated: August 8, 2026
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How does fork() enable non-blocking snapshots?

fork() creates a child process sharing the parent's physical memory pages. The child can dump a read-only consistent view while the parent immediately resumes serving writes—no blocking required.

Answered in

Copy-on-Write Snapshots

fork() shares parent memory, copying only written pages for non-blocking snapshots. Write-heavy loads can spike memory to 2x under load.

Crashtech Editorial August 8, 2026 System Design

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