Helpers are started on demand, and in theory the muxer can handle up to 1k helpers per instance. It is up to squid to decide how many helpers to start.
The helper can be controlled using various signals: - SIGHUP: dump the state of all helpers to STDERR
It is not yet able to manage dying helpers.
* Copyright (C) 1996-2021 The Squid Software Foundation and contributors * * Squid software is distributed under GPLv2+ license and includes * contributions from numerous individuals and organizations. * Please see the COPYING and CONTRIBUTORS files for details. Copyright (C) Francesco Chemolli <kinkie@squid-cache.org> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.