Carnegie Mellon

Signals

Instructors:
Dr. Santhosh

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 1

 Carnegie Mellon

Signals
 A signal is a small message that notifies a process that an
event of some type has occurred in the system
 Akin to exceptions and interrupts
 Sent from the kernel (sometimes at the request of another process) to a
process
 Signal type is identified by small integer ID’s (1-30)
 Only information in a signal is its ID and the fact that it arrived

ID Name Default Action Corresponding Event

2 SIGINT Terminate User typed ctrl-c
9 SIGKILL Terminate Kill program (cannot override or ignore)
11 SIGSEGV Terminate Segmentation violation
14 SIGALRM Terminate Timer signal
17 SIGCHLD Ignore Child stopped or terminated

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 2

 Carnegie Mellon

Signal Concepts: Sending a Signal

 Kernel sends (delivers) a signal to a destination process by
updating some state in the context of the destination process

 Kernel sends a signal for one of the following reasons:

 Kernel has detected a system event such as divide-by-zero (SIGFPE) or the
termination of a child process (SIGCHLD)
 Another process has invoked the kill system call to explicitly request
the kernel to send a signal to the destination process

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 3

 Carnegie Mellon

Signal Concepts: Receiving a Signal

 A destination process receives a signal when it is forced by
the kernel to react in some way to the delivery of the signal

 Some possible ways to react:

 Ignore the signal (do nothing)
 Terminate the process (with optional core dump)
 Catch the signal by executing a user-level function called signal handler
 Akin to a hardware exception handler being called in response to an
asynchronous interrupt:

(1) Signal (2) Control passes

received by I to signal handler
curr
process Inext
(3) Signal
handler
(4) Signal handler runs
returns to
next instruction
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 4
 Carnegie Mellon

Signal Concepts: Pending and Blocked Signals

 A signal is pending if sent but not yet received
 There can be at most one pending signal of any particular type
 Important: Signals are not queued
 If a process has a pending signal of type k, then subsequent signals of
type k that are sent to that process are discarded

 A process can block the receipt of certain signals

 Blocked signals can be delivered, but will not be received until the signal
is unblocked

 A pending signal is received at most once

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 5

 Carnegie Mellon

Signal Concepts: Pending/Blocked Bits

 Kernel maintains pending and blocked bit vectors in the

context of each process
 pending: represents the set of pending signals
 Kernel sets bit k in pending when a signal of type k is delivered
 Kernel clears bit k in pending when a signal of type k is received

 blocked: represents the set of blocked signals

 Can be set and cleared by using the sigprocmask function
 Also referred to as the signal mask.

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 6

 Carnegie Mellon

Sending Signals: Process Groups

 Every process belongs to exactly one process group

pid=10
pgid=10
Shell

pid=20 Fore- Back- Back-

pid=32 pid=40
pgid=20 ground ground pgid=32 ground pgid=40
job job #1 job #2

Background Background
process group 32 process group 40
Child Child

pid=21 pid=22 getpgrp()

pgid=20 pgid=20 Return process group of current process
Foreground setpgid()
process group 20 Change process group of a process (see
text for details)
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 7
 Carnegie Mellon

Sending Signals with /bin/kill Program

 /bin/kill program
sends arbitrary signal to a linux> ./forks 16
Child1: pid=24818 pgrp=24817
process or process group Child2: pid=24819 pgrp=24817

linux> ps
 Examples PID TTY TIME CMD
 /bin/kill –9 24818 24788 pts/2 00:00:00 tcsh
Send SIGKILL to process 24818 24818 pts/2 00:00:02 forks
24819 pts/2 00:00:02 forks
24820 pts/2 00:00:00 ps
 /bin/kill –9 –24817 linux> /bin/kill -9 -24817
linux> ps
Send SIGKILL to every process
PID TTY TIME CMD
in process group 24817 24788 pts/2 00:00:00 tcsh
24823 pts/2 00:00:00 ps
linux>

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 8

 Carnegie Mellon

Sending Signals from the Keyboard

 Typing ctrl-c (ctrl-z) causes the kernel to send a SIGINT (SIGTSTP) to every
job in the foreground process group.
 SIGINT – default action is to terminate each process
 SIGTSTP – default action is to stop (suspend) each process
pid=10
pgid=10
Shell

pid=20 Fore- Back- Back-

pid=32 pid=40
pgid=20 ground ground pgid=32 ground pgid=40
job job #1 job #2

Background Background
process group 32 process group 40
Child Child

pid=21 pid=22
pgid=20 pgid=20

Foreground
process group 20 9
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition
 Carnegie Mellon

Example of ctrl-c and ctrl-z

bluefish> ./forks 17 STAT (process state) Legend:
Child: pid=28108 pgrp=28107
Parent: pid=28107 pgrp=28107 First letter:
<types ctrl-z> S: sleeping
Suspended T: stopped
bluefish> ps w R: running
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
27699 pts/8 Ss 0:00 -tcsh
28107 pts/8 T 0:01 ./forks 17 Second letter:
28108 pts/8 T 0:01 ./forks 17 s: session leader
28109 pts/8 R+ 0:00 ps w +: foreground proc group
bluefish> fg
./forks 17 See “man ps” for more
<types ctrl-c> details
bluefish> ps w
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
27699 pts/8 Ss 0:00 -tcsh
28110 pts/8 R+ 0:00 ps w

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 10

 Carnegie Mellon

Sending Signals with kill Function

void fork12()
{
pid_t pid[N];
int i;
int child_status;

for (i = 0; i < N; i++)

if ((pid[i] = fork()) == 0) {
/* Child: Infinite Loop */
while(1)
;
}

for (i = 0; i < N; i++) {

printf("Killing process %d\n", pid[i]);
kill(pid[i], SIGINT);
}

for (i = 0; i < N; i++) {

pid_t wpid = wait(&child_status);
if (WIFEXITED(child_status))
printf("Child %d terminated with exit status %d\n",
wpid, WEXITSTATUS(child_status));
else
printf("Child %d terminated abnormally\n", wpid);
} forks.c
}
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 11
 Carnegie Mellon

Receiving Signals
 Suppose kernel is returning from an exception handler
and is ready to pass control to process p

Process A Process B

user code

kernel code context switch

Time user code

kernel code context switch

user code

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 12

 Carnegie Mellon

Receiving Signals
 Suppose kernel is returning from an exception handler
and is ready to pass control to process p

 Kernel computes pnb = pending & ~blocked

 The set of pending nonblocked signals for process p

 If (pnb == 0)
 Pass control to next instruction in the logical flow for p
 Else
 Choose least nonzero bit k in pnb and force process p to receive
signal k
 The receipt of the signal triggers some action by p
 Repeat for all nonzero k in pnb
 Pass control to next instruction in logical flow for p
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 13
 Carnegie Mellon

Default Actions
 Each signal type has a predefined default action, which is
one of:
 The process terminates
 The process stops until restarted by a SIGCONT signal
 The process ignores the signal

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 14

 Carnegie Mellon

Installing Signal Handlers

 The signal function modifies the default action associated
with the receipt of signal signum:
 handler_t *signal(int signum, handler_t *handler)

 Different values for handler:

 SIG_IGN: ignore signals of type signum
 SIG_DFL: revert to the default action on receipt of signals of type signum
 Otherwise, handler is the address of a user-level signal handler
 Called when process receives signal of type signum
 Referred to as “installing” the handler
 Executing handler is called “catching” or “handling” the signal
 When the handler executes its return statement, control passes back to
instruction in the control flow of the process that was interrupted by
receipt of the signal

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 15

 Carnegie Mellon

Signal Handling Example

void sigint_handler(int sig) /* SIGINT handler */
{
printf("So you think you can stop the bomb with ctrl-c, do you?\n");
sleep(2);
printf("Well...");
fflush(stdout);
sleep(1);
printf("OK. :-)\n");
exit(0);
}

int main()
{
/* Install the SIGINT handler */
if (signal(SIGINT, sigint_handler) == SIG_ERR)
unix_error("signal error");

/* Wait for the receipt of a signal */

pause();

return 0;
} sigint.c
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 16
 Carnegie Mellon

Signals Handlers as Concurrent Flows

 A signal handler is a separate logical flow (not process) that
runs concurrently with the main program

Process A Process A Process B

while (1) handler(){

; …
}

Time

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 17

 Carnegie Mellon

Another View of Signal Handlers as

Concurrent Flows
Process A Process B

Signal delivered Icurr user code (main)

to process A context switch
kernel code

user code (main)

kernel code context switch

Signal received
by process A user code (handler)

kernel code
Inext
user code (main)

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 18

 Carnegie Mellon

Nested Signal Handlers

 Handlers can be interrupted by other handlers

Main Handler Handler

program S T
(2) Control
(1) Program Icurr passes to
catches signal handler S (4) Control
s (3) Program passes to
(7) Main Inext catches signal handler T
program t
resumes
(5) Handler
(6) Handler
T
S
returns to
returns to
handler S
main
program

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 19

 Carnegie Mellon

Blocking and Unblocking Signals

 Implicit blocking mechanism
 Kernel blocks any pending signals of type currently being handled.
 E.g., A SIGINT handler can’t be interrupted by another SIGINT

 Explicit blocking and unblocking mechanism

 sigprocmask function

 Supporting functions
 sigemptyset – Create empty set
 sigfillset – Add every signal number to set
 sigaddset – Add signal number to set
 sigdelset – Delete signal number from set

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 20

 Carnegie Mellon

Temporarily Blocking Signals

sigset_t mask, prev_mask;

Sigemptyset(&mask);
Sigaddset(&mask, SIGINT);

/* Block SIGINT and save previous blocked set */

Sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &mask, &prev_mask);
…

/* Code region that will not be interrupted

by SIGINT */

/* Restore previous blocked set, unblocking SIGINT */

Sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, &prev_mask, NULL);

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 21

 Carnegie Mellon

Safe Signal Handling

 Handlers are tricky because they are concurrent with
main program and share the same global data structures.
 Shared data structures can become corrupted.

 We’ll explore concurrency issues later in the term.

 For now here are some guidelines to help you avoid

trouble.

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 22

 Carnegie Mellon

Guidelines for Writing Safe Handlers

 G0: Keep your handlers as simple as possible
 e.g., Set a global flag and return
 G1: Call only async-signal-safe functions in your handlers
 printf, sprintf, malloc, and exit are not safe!
 G2: Save and restore errno on entry and exit
 So that other handlers don’t overwrite your value of errno
 G3: Protect accesses to shared data structures by temporarily
blocking all signals.
 To prevent possible corruption
 G4: Declare global variables as volatile
 To prevent compiler from storing them in a register
 G5: Declare global flags as volatile sig_atomic_t
 flag: variable that is only read or written (e.g. flag = 1, not flag++)
 Flag declared this way does not need to be protected like other globals
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 23
 Carnegie Mellon

Async-Signal-Safety
 Function is async-signal-safe if either reentrant (e.g., all
variables stored on stack frame, CS:APP3e 12.7.2) or non-
interruptible by signals.
 Posix guarantees 117 functions to be async-signal-safe
 Source: “man 7 signal”
 Popular functions on the list:

_exit, write, wait, waitpid, sleep, kill
 Popular functions that are not on the list:
 printf, sprintf, malloc, exit
 Unfortunate fact: write is the only async-signal-safe output function

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 24

 Carnegie Mellon

Safely Generating Formatted Output

 Use the reentrant SIO (Safe I/O library) from csapp.c in
your handlers.
 ssize_t sio_puts(char s[]) /* Put string */
 ssize_t sio_putl(long v) /* Put long */
 void sio_error(char s[]) /* Put msg & exit */

void sigint_handler(int sig) /* Safe SIGINT handler */

{
Sio_puts("So you think you can stop the bomb with ctrl-c, do you?\n");
sleep(2);
Sio_puts("Well...");
sleep(1);
Sio_puts("OK. :-)\n");
_exit(0);
}
sigintsafe.c

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 25

 Carnegie Mellon

Portable Signal Handling

 Different versions of Unix can have different signal handling
semantics
 Some older systems restore action to default after catching signal
 On these systems, the handler must explicitly reinstall itself, by calling
signal, each time it runs.
 System calls such as read, wait, and accept that can potentially block the
process for a long period of time are called slow system calls.
 On some older versions of Unix, slow system calls that are interrupted when
a handler catches a signal do not resume when the signal handler returns
but instead return immediately to the user with an error condition and
errno set to EINTR.
 On these systems, programmers must include code that manually restarts
interrupted system calls Some systems don’t block signals of the type being
handled

csapp.c
Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 26
 Carnegie Mellon

Portable Signal Handling

 Solution: sigaction
 To deal with these issues, the Posix standard defines the
sigaction function, which allows users to clearly specify the
signal-handling semantics they want when they install a
handler.
 The Signal wrapper installs a signal handler with the
following signalhandling semantics: .
 Only signals of the type currently being processed by the
handler are blocked. .
 As with all signal implementations, signals are not queued.
 Interrupted system calls are automatically restarted
whenever possible

Bryant and O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition 27