#include <signal.h> int sigaction(int signum, const struct sigaction *act, struct sigaction *oldact);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
sigaction(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE
siginfo_t: _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 199309L
signum specifies the signal and can be any valid signal except SIGKILL and SIGSTOP.
If act is non-NULL, the new action for signal signum is installed from act. If oldact is non-NULL, the previous action is saved in oldact.
The sigaction structure is defined as something like:
struct sigaction {
void (*sa_handler)(int);
void (*sa_sigaction)(int, siginfo_t *, void *);
sigset_t sa_mask;
int sa_flags;
void (*sa_restorer)(void);
};
On some architectures a union is involved: do not assign to both sa_handler and sa_sigaction.
The sa_restorer field is not intended for application use. (POSIX does not specify a sa_restorer field.) Some further details of purpose of this field can be found in sigreturn(2).
sa_handler specifies the action to be associated with signum and may be SIG_DFL for the default action, SIG_IGN to ignore this signal, or a pointer to a signal handling function. This function receives the signal number as its only argument.
If SA_SIGINFO is specified in sa_flags, then sa_sigaction (instead of sa_handler) specifies the signal-handling function for signum. This function receives the signal number as its first argument, a pointer to a siginfo_t as its second argument and a pointer to a ucontext_t (cast to void *) as its third argument. (Commonly, the handler function doesn't make any use of the third argument. See getcontext(3) for further information about ucontext_t.)
sa_mask specifies a mask of signals which should be blocked (i.e., added to the signal mask of the thread in which the signal handler is invoked) during execution of the signal handler. In addition, the signal which triggered the handler will be blocked, unless the SA_NODEFER flag is used.
sa_flags specifies a set of flags which modify the behavior of the signal. It is formed by the bitwise OR of zero or more of the following:
If the SA_NOCLDWAIT flag is set when establishing a handler for SIGCHLD, POSIX.1 leaves it unspecified whether a SIGCHLD signal is generated when a child process terminates. On Linux, a SIGCHLD signal is generated in this case; on some other implementations, it is not.
The siginfo_t argument to sa_sigaction is a struct with the following fields:
siginfo_t {
int si_signo; /* Signal number */
int si_errno; /* An errno value */
int si_code; /* Signal code */
int si_trapno; /* Trap number that caused
hardware-generated signal
(unused on most architectures) */
pid_t si_pid; /* Sending process ID */
uid_t si_uid; /* Real user ID of sending process */
int si_status; /* Exit value or signal */
clock_t si_utime; /* User time consumed */
clock_t si_stime; /* System time consumed */
sigval_t si_value; /* Signal value */
int si_int; /* POSIX.1b signal */
void *si_ptr; /* POSIX.1b signal */
int si_overrun; /* Timer overrun count;
POSIX.1b timers */
int si_timerid; /* Timer ID; POSIX.1b timers */
void *si_addr; /* Memory location which caused fault */
long si_band; /* Band event (was int in
glibc 2.3.2 and earlier) */
int si_fd; /* File descriptor */
short si_addr_lsb; /* Least significant bit of address
(since Linux 2.6.32) */
void *si_lower; /* Lower bound when address violation
occurred (since Linux 3.19) */
void *si_upper; /* Upper bound when address violation
occurred (since Linux 3.19) */
int si_pkey; /* Protection key on PTE that caused
fault (since Linux 4.6) */
void *si_call_addr; /* Address of system call instruction
(since Linux 3.5) */
int si_syscall; /* Number of attempted system call
(since Linux 3.5) */
unsigned int si_arch; /* Architecture of attempted system call
(since Linux 3.5) */
}
si_signo, si_errno and si_code are defined for all signals. (si_errno is generally unused on Linux.) The rest of the struct may be a union, so that one should read only the fields that are meaningful for the given signal:
Some suberrors of SIGBUS, in particular BUS_MCEERR_AO and BUS_MCEERR_AR, also fill in si_addr_lsb. This field indicates the least significant bit of the reported address and therefore the extent of the corruption. For example, if a full page was corrupted, si_addr_lsb contains log2(sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE)). When SIGTRAP is delivered in response to a ptrace(2) event (PTRACE_EVENT_foo), si_addr is not populated, but si_pid and si_uid are populated with the respective process ID and user ID responsible for delivering the trap. In the case of seccomp(2), the tracee will be shown as delivering the event. BUS_MCEERR_* and si_addr_lsb are Linux-specific extensions.
The SEGV_BNDERR suberror of SIGSEGV populates si_lower and si_upper.
The SEGV_PKUERR suberror of SIGSEGV populates si_pkey.
si_code is a value (not a bit mask) indicating why this signal was sent. For a ptrace(2) event, si_code will contain SIGTRAP and have the ptrace event in the high byte:
(SIGTRAP | PTRACE_EVENT_foo << 8).
For a regular signal, the following list shows the values which can be placed in si_code for any signal, along with reason that the signal was generated.
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGILL signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGFPE signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGSEGV signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGBUS signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGTRAP signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGCHLD signal:
The following values can be placed in si_code for a SIGIO/SIGPOLL signal:
The following value can be placed in si_code for a SIGSYS signal:
According to POSIX, the behavior of a process is undefined after it ignores a SIGFPE, SIGILL, or SIGSEGV signal that was not generated by kill(2) or raise(3). Integer division by zero has undefined result. On some architectures it will generate a SIGFPE signal. (Also dividing the most negative integer by -1 may generate SIGFPE.) Ignoring this signal might lead to an endless loop.
POSIX.1-1990 disallowed setting the action for SIGCHLD to SIG_IGN. POSIX.1-2001 and later allow this possibility, so that ignoring SIGCHLD can be used to prevent the creation of zombies (see wait(2)). Nevertheless, the historical BSD and System V behaviors for ignoring SIGCHLD differ, so that the only completely portable method of ensuring that terminated children do not become zombies is to catch the SIGCHLD signal and perform a wait(2) or similar.
POSIX.1-1990 specified only SA_NOCLDSTOP. POSIX.1-2001 added SA_NOCLDSTOP, SA_NOCLDWAIT, SA_NODEFER, SA_ONSTACK, SA_RESETHAND, SA_RESTART, and SA_SIGINFO. Use of these latter values in sa_flags may be less portable in applications intended for older UNIX implementations.
The SA_RESETHAND flag is compatible with the SVr4 flag of the same name.
The SA_NODEFER flag is compatible with the SVr4 flag of the same name under kernels 1.3.9 and newer. On older kernels the Linux implementation allowed the receipt of any signal, not just the one we are installing (effectively overriding any sa_mask settings).
sigaction() can be called with a NULL second argument to query the current signal handler. It can also be used to check whether a given signal is valid for the current machine by calling it with NULL second and third arguments.
It is not possible to block SIGKILL or SIGSTOP (by specifying them in sa_mask). Attempts to do so are silently ignored.
See sigsetops(3) for details on manipulating signal sets.
See signal(7) for a list of the async-signal-safe functions that can be safely called inside from inside a signal handler.
The original Linux system call was named sigaction(). However, with the addition of real-time signals in Linux 2.2, the fixed-size, 32-bit sigset_t type supported by that system call was no longer fit for purpose. Consequently, a new system call, rt_sigaction(), was added to support an enlarged sigset_t type. The new system call takes a fourth argument, size_t sigsetsize, which specifies the size in bytes of the signal sets in act.sa_mask and oldact.sa_mask. This argument is currently required to have the value sizeof(sigset_t) (or the error EINVAL results). The glibc sigaction() wrapper function hides these details from us, transparently calling rt_sigaction() when the kernel provides it.