Re: For review: pidfd_send_signal(2) manual page
flat view
From: Florian Weimer <hidden>
Date: 2019-09-23 11:26:49
Also in:
linux-man, lkml
* Michael Kerrisk:
SYNOPSIS
int pidfd_send_signal(int pidfd, int sig, siginfo_t info,
unsigned int flags);This probably should reference a header for siginfo_t.
ESRCH The target process does not exist.
If the descriptor is valid, does this mean the process has been waited for? Maybe this can be made more explicit.
The pidfd_send_signal() system call allows the avoidance of race
conditions that occur when using traditional interfaces (such as
kill(2)) to signal a process. The problem is that the traditional
interfaces specify the target process via a process ID (PID), with
the result that the sender may accidentally send a signal to the
wrong process if the originally intended target process has termi‐
nated and its PID has been recycled for another process. By con‐
trast, a PID file descriptor is a stable reference to a specific
process; if that process terminates, then the file descriptor
ceases to be valid and the caller of pidfd_send_signal() is
informed of this fact via an ESRCH error.It would be nice to explain somewhere how you can avoid the race using a PID descriptor. Is there anything else besides CLONE_PIDFD?
static
int pidfd_send_signal(int pidfd, int sig, siginfo_t *info,
unsigned int flags)
{
return syscall(__NR_pidfd_send_signal, pidfd, sig, info, flags);
}Please use a different function name. Thanks.