sigaction(3p) — Linux manual page

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SIGACTION(3P)           POSIX Programmer's Manual          SIGACTION(3P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       sigaction — examine and change a signal action

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <signal.h>

       int sigaction(int sig, const struct sigaction *restrict act,
           struct sigaction *restrict oact);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The sigaction() function allows the calling process to examine
       and/or specify the action to be associated with a specific
       signal. The argument sig specifies the signal; acceptable values
       are defined in <signal.h>.

       The structure sigaction, used to describe an action to be taken,
       is defined in the <signal.h> header to include at least the
       following members:
 ┌─────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
 │   Member Type   Member Name   Description               │
 ├─────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
 │ void(*) (int)   sa_handler    │Pointer to a signal-catching function  │
 │                 │               │or one of the macros SIG_IGN or        │
 │                 │               │SIG_DFL.                               │
 │ sigset_t        sa_mask       │Additional set of signals to be        │
 │                 │               │blocked during execution of signal-    │
 │                 │               │catching function.                     │
 │ int             sa_flags      │Special flags to affect behavior of    │
 │                 │               │signal.                                │
 │ void(*) (int,   sa_sigaction  │Pointer to a signal-catching function. │
 │   siginfo_t *,  │               │                                       │
 │ void *)         │               │                                       │
 └─────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘

       The  storage occupied by sa_handler and sa_sigaction may overlap,
       and a conforming application shall not use both simultaneously.

       If the argument act is  not  a  null  pointer,  it  points  to  a
       structure  specifying  the  action  to  be  associated  with  the
       specified signal. If the argument oact is not a null pointer, the
       action previously associated with the signal  is  stored  in  the
       location pointed to by the argument oact.  If the argument act is
       a  null pointer, signal handling is unchanged; thus, the call can
       be used to enquire about the current handling of a given  signal.
       The  SIGKILL and SIGSTOP signals shall not be added to the signal
       mask using this mechanism; this restriction shall be enforced  by
       the system without causing an error to be indicated.

       If  the  SA_SIGINFO  flag  (see below) is cleared in the sa_flags
       field of the sigaction structure, the sa_handler field identifies
       the action to be associated with the specified  signal.   If  the
       SA_SIGINFO  flag  is  set in the sa_flags field, the sa_sigaction
       field specifies a signal-catching function.

       The sa_flags field can be used to  modify  the  behavior  of  the
       specified signal.

       The following flags, defined in the <signal.h> header, can be set
       in sa_flags:

       SA_NOCLDSTOP  Do not generate SIGCHLD when children stop or
                     stopped children continue.

                     If sig is SIGCHLD and the SA_NOCLDSTOP flag is not
                     set in sa_flags, and the implementation supports
                     the SIGCHLD signal, then a SIGCHLD signal shall be
                     generated for the calling process whenever any of
                     its child processes stop and a SIGCHLD signal may
                     be generated for the calling process whenever any
                     of its stopped child processes are continued.  If
                     sig is SIGCHLD and the SA_NOCLDSTOP flag is set in
                     sa_flags, then the implementation shall not
                     generate a SIGCHLD signal in this way.

       SA_ONSTACK    If set and an alternate signal stack has been
                     declared with sigaltstack(), the signal shall be
                     delivered to the calling process on that stack.
                     Otherwise, the signal shall be delivered on the
                     current stack.

       SA_RESETHAND  If set, the disposition of the signal shall be
                     reset to SIG_DFL and the SA_SIGINFO flag shall be
                     cleared on entry to the signal handler.

                     Note:  SIGILL and SIGTRAP cannot be automatically
                            reset when delivered; the system silently
                            enforces this restriction.

                     Otherwise, the disposition of the signal shall not
                     be modified on entry to the signal handler.

                     In addition, if this flag is set, sigaction() may
                     behave as if the SA_NODEFER flag were also set.

       SA_RESTART    This flag affects the behavior of interruptible
                     functions; that is, those specified to fail with
                     errno set to [EINTR].  If set, and a function
                     specified as interruptible is interrupted by this
                     signal, the function shall restart and shall not
                     fail with [EINTR] unless otherwise specified. If an
                     interruptible function which uses a timeout is
                     restarted, the duration of the timeout following
                     the restart is set to an unspecified value that
                     does not exceed the original timeout value. If the
                     flag is not set, interruptible functions
                     interrupted by this signal shall fail with errno
                     set to [EINTR].

       SA_SIGINFO    If cleared and the signal is caught, the signal-
                     catching function shall be entered as:

                         void func(int signo);

                     where signo is the only argument to the signal-
                     catching function. In this case, the application
                     shall use the sa_handler member to describe the
                     signal-catching function and the application shall
                     not modify the sa_sigaction member.

                     If SA_SIGINFO is set and the signal is caught, the
                     signal-catching function shall be entered as:

                         void func(int signo, siginfo_t *info, void *context);

                     where two additional arguments are passed to the
                     signal-catching function. The second argument shall
                     point to an object of type siginfo_t explaining the
                     reason why the signal was generated; the third
                     argument can be cast to a pointer to an object of
                     type ucontext_t to refer to the receiving thread's
                     context that was interrupted when the signal was
                     delivered. In this case, the application shall use
                     the sa_sigaction member to describe the signal-
                     catching function and the application shall not
                     modify the sa_handler member.

                     The si_signo member contains the system-generated
                     signal number.

                     The si_errno member may contain implementation-
                     defined additional error information; if non-zero,
                     it contains an error number identifying the
                     condition that caused the signal to be generated.

                     The si_code member contains a code identifying the
                     cause of the signal, as described in Section 2.4.3,
                     Signal Actions.

       SA_NOCLDWAIT  If sig does not equal SIGCHLD, the behavior is
                     unspecified. Otherwise, the behavior of the
                     SA_NOCLDWAIT flag is as specified in Consequences
                     of Process Termination.

       SA_NODEFER    If set and sig is caught, sig shall not be added to
                     the thread's signal mask on entry to the signal
                     handler unless it is included in sa_mask.
                     Otherwise, sig shall always be added to the
                     thread's signal mask on entry to the signal
                     handler.

       When a signal is caught by a signal-catching function installed
       by sigaction(), a new signal mask is calculated and installed for
       the duration of the signal-catching function (or until a call to
       either sigprocmask() or sigsuspend() is made). This mask is
       formed by taking the union of the current signal mask and the
       value of the sa_mask for the signal being delivered, and unless
       SA_NODEFER or SA_RESETHAND is set, then including the signal
       being delivered. If and when the user's signal handler returns
       normally, the original signal mask is restored.

       Once an action is installed for a specific signal, it shall
       remain installed until another action is explicitly requested (by
       another call to sigaction()), until the SA_RESETHAND flag causes
       resetting of the handler, or until one of the exec functions is
       called.

       If the previous action for sig had been established by signal(),
       the values of the fields returned in the structure pointed to by
       oact are unspecified, and in particular oact->sa_handler is not
       necessarily the same value passed to signal().  However, if a
       pointer to the same structure or a copy thereof is passed to a
       subsequent call to sigaction() via the act argument, handling of
       the signal shall be as if the original call to signal() were
       repeated.

       If sigaction() fails, no new signal handler is installed.

       It is unspecified whether an attempt to set the action for a
       signal that cannot be caught or ignored to SIG_DFL is ignored or
       causes an error to be returned with errno set to [EINVAL].

       If SA_SIGINFO is not set in sa_flags, then the disposition of
       subsequent occurrences of sig when it is already pending is
       implementation-defined; the signal-catching function shall be
       invoked with a single argument.  If SA_SIGINFO is set in
       sa_flags, then subsequent occurrences of sig generated by
       sigqueue() or as a result of any signal-generating function that
       supports the specification of an application-defined value (when
       sig is already pending) shall be queued in FIFO order until
       delivered or accepted; the signal-catching function shall be
       invoked with three arguments. The application specified value is
       passed to the signal-catching function as the si_value member of
       the siginfo_t structure.

       The result of the use of sigaction() and a sigwait() function
       concurrently within a process on the same signal is unspecified.

RETURN VALUE         top

       Upon successful completion, sigaction() shall return 0;
       otherwise, -1 shall be returned, errno shall be set to indicate
       the error, and no new signal-catching function shall be
       installed.

ERRORS         top

       The sigaction() function shall fail if:

       EINVAL The sig argument is not a valid signal number or an
              attempt is made to catch a signal that cannot be caught or
              ignore a signal that cannot be ignored.

       The sigaction() function may fail if:

       EINVAL An attempt was made to set the action to SIG_DFL for a
              signal that cannot be caught or ignored (or both).

       In addition, on systems that do not support the XSI option, the
       sigaction() function may fail if the SA_SIGINFO flag is set in
       the sa_flags field of the sigaction structure for a signal not in
       the range SIGRTMIN to SIGRTMAX.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES         top

   Establishing a Signal Handler
       The following example demonstrates the use of sigaction() to
       establish a handler for the SIGINT signal.

           #include <signal.h>

           static void handler(int signum)
           {
               /* Take appropriate actions for signal delivery */
           }

           int main()
           {
               struct sigaction sa;

               sa.sa_handler = handler;
               sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
               sa.sa_flags = SA_RESTART; /* Restart functions if
                                            interrupted by handler */
               if (sigaction(SIGINT, &sa, NULL) == -1)
                   /* Handle error */;

               /* Further code */
           }

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       The sigaction() function supersedes the signal() function, and
       should be used in preference. In particular, sigaction() and
       signal() should not be used in the same process to control the
       same signal.  The behavior of async-signal-safe functions, as
       defined in their respective DESCRIPTION sections, is as specified
       by this volume of POSIX.1‐2017, regardless of invocation from a
       signal-catching function. This is the only intended meaning of
       the statement that async-signal-safe functions may be used in
       signal-catching functions without restrictions. Applications must
       still consider all effects of such functions on such things as
       data structures, files, and process state. In particular,
       application developers need to consider the restrictions on
       interactions when interrupting sleep() and interactions among
       multiple handles for a file description. The fact that any
       specific function is listed as async-signal-safe does not
       necessarily mean that invocation of that function from a signal-
       catching function is recommended.

       In order to prevent errors arising from interrupting non-async-
       signal-safe function calls, applications should protect calls to
       these functions either by blocking the appropriate signals or
       through the use of some programmatic semaphore (see semget(3p),
       sem_init(3p), sem_open(3p), and so on). Note in particular that
       even the ``safe'' functions may modify errno; the signal-catching
       function, if not executing as an independent thread, should save
       and restore its value in order to avoid the possibility that
       delivery of a signal in between an error return from a function
       that sets errno and the subsequent examination of errno could
       result in the signal-catching function changing the value of
       errno.  Naturally, the same principles apply to the async-signal-
       safety of application routines and asynchronous data access. Note
       that longjmp() and siglongjmp() are not in the list of async-
       signal-safe functions. This is because the code executing after
       longjmp() and siglongjmp() can call any unsafe functions with the
       same danger as calling those unsafe functions directly from the
       signal handler. Applications that use longjmp() and siglongjmp()
       from within signal handlers require rigorous protection in order
       to be portable. Many of the other functions that are excluded
       from the list are traditionally implemented using either malloc()
       or free() functions or the standard I/O library, both of which
       traditionally use data structures in a non-async-signal-safe
       manner. Since any combination of different functions using a
       common data structure can cause async-signal-safety problems,
       this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 does not define the behavior when any
       unsafe function is called in a signal handler that interrupts an
       unsafe function.

       Usually, the signal is executed on the stack that was in effect
       before the signal was delivered. An alternate stack may be
       specified to receive a subset of the signals being caught.

       When the signal handler returns, the receiving thread resumes
       execution at the point it was interrupted unless the signal
       handler makes other arrangements. If longjmp() or _longjmp() is
       used to leave the signal handler, then the signal mask must be
       explicitly restored.

       This volume of POSIX.1‐2017 defines the third argument of a
       signal handling function when SA_SIGINFO is set as a void *
       instead of a ucontext_t *, but without requiring type checking.
       New applications should explicitly cast the third argument of the
       signal handling function to ucontext_t *.

       The BSD optional four argument signal handling function is not
       supported by this volume of POSIX.1‐2017. The BSD declaration
       would be:

           void handler(int sig, int code, struct sigcontext *scp,
               char *addr);

       where sig is the signal number, code is additional information on
       certain signals, scp is a pointer to the sigcontext structure,
       and addr is additional address information. Much the same
       information is available in the objects pointed to by the second
       argument of the signal handler specified when SA_SIGINFO is set.

       Since the sigaction() function is allowed but not required to set
       SA_NODEFER when the application sets the SA_RESETHAND flag,
       applications which depend on the SA_RESETHAND functionality for
       the newly installed signal handler must always explicitly set
       SA_NODEFER when they set SA_RESETHAND in order to be portable.

       See also the rationale for Realtime Signal Generation and
       Delivery in the Rationale (Informative) volume of POSIX.1‐2017,
       Section B.2.4.2, Signal Generation and Delivery.

RATIONALE         top

       Although this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 requires that signals that
       cannot be ignored shall not be added to the signal mask when a
       signal-catching function is entered, there is no explicit
       requirement that subsequent calls to sigaction() reflect this in
       the information returned in the oact argument. In other words, if
       SIGKILL is included in the sa_mask field of act, it is
       unspecified whether or not a subsequent call to sigaction()
       returns with SIGKILL included in the sa_mask field of oact.

       The SA_NOCLDSTOP flag, when supplied in the act->sa_flags
       parameter, allows overloading SIGCHLD with the System V semantics
       that each SIGCLD signal indicates a single terminated child. Most
       conforming applications that catch SIGCHLD are expected to
       install signal-catching functions that repeatedly call the
       waitpid() function with the WNOHANG flag set, acting on each
       child for which status is returned, until waitpid() returns zero.
       If stopped children are not of interest, the use of the
       SA_NOCLDSTOP flag can prevent the overhead from invoking the
       signal-catching routine when they stop.

       Some historical implementations also define other mechanisms for
       stopping processes, such as the ptrace() function. These
       implementations usually do not generate a SIGCHLD signal when
       processes stop due to this mechanism; however, that is beyond the
       scope of this volume of POSIX.1‐2017.

       This volume of POSIX.1‐2017 requires that calls to sigaction()
       that supply a NULL act argument succeed, even in the case of
       signals that cannot be caught or ignored (that is, SIGKILL or
       SIGSTOP).  The System V signal() and BSD sigvec() functions
       return [EINVAL] in these cases and, in this respect, their
       behavior varies from sigaction().

       This volume of POSIX.1‐2017 requires that sigaction() properly
       save and restore a signal action set up by the ISO C standard
       signal() function. However, there is no guarantee that the
       reverse is true, nor could there be given the greater amount of
       information conveyed by the sigaction structure. Because of this,
       applications should avoid using both functions for the same
       signal in the same process. Since this cannot always be avoided
       in case of general-purpose library routines, they should always
       be implemented with sigaction().

       It was intended that the signal() function should be
       implementable as a library routine using sigaction().

       The POSIX Realtime Extension extends the sigaction() function as
       specified by the POSIX.1‐1990 standard to allow the application
       to request on a per-signal basis via an additional signal action
       flag that the extra parameters, including the application-defined
       signal value, if any, be passed to the signal-catching function.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       Section 2.4, Signal Concepts, exec(1p), _Exit(3p), kill(3p),
       _longjmp(3p), longjmp(3p), pthread_sigmask(3p), raise(3p),
       semget(3p), sem_init(3p), sem_open(3p), sigaddset(3p),
       sigaltstack(3p), sigdelset(3p), sigemptyset(3p), sigfillset(3p),
       sigismember(3p), signal(3p), sigsuspend(3p), wait(3p), waitid(3p)

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, signal.h(0p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                     SIGACTION(3P)

Pages that refer to this page: signal.h(0p)alarm(3p)exec(3p)fcntl(3p)getrusage(3p)ioctl(3p)kill(3p)longjmp(3p)msgrcv(3p)msgsnd(3p)pthread_sigmask(3p)raise(3p)semop(3p)sigaddset(3p)sigaltstack(3p)sigdelset(3p)sigemptyset(3p)sigfillset(3p)sighold(3p)siginterrupt(3p)sigismember(3p)signal(3p)sigsuspend(3p)sigtimedwait(3p)sigwait(3p)sleep(3p)