What are the consequences for child processes when their parent process terminates or is killed?

When a parent process terminates or is killed, child processes usually become "orphans." In Unix-like systems, such processes are automatically adopted by the init process (PID 1), which becomes their new parent. This allows child processes to continue running if they do not depend directly on the parent.

However, if the parent process terminates due to an error or system crash, child processes may be left unmanaged and sometimes also terminate if they depend on the parent (for example, through communication channels or shared resources). In some cases, systems or scripts may be configured to terminate all child processes en masse when the parent is killed.