PATCH: 2.6.11 Making it possible to ignore blocked signals

From: Tobias Grundmann
Date: Mon Mar 14 2005 - 10:33:51 EST


Hi,

the following patch fixes the IMHO incorrect behavior to silently ignore attempts to set SIG_IGN on blocked signals (i.e. while running in a signal handler). See below for further explanation.

Tobias

--- kernel/signal.c.orig 2005-03-06 18:12:26.000000000 +0100
+++ kernel/signal.c 2005-03-06 18:13:08.000000000 +0100
@@ -163,14 +163,6 @@
if (t->ptrace & PT_PTRACED)
return 0;

- /*
- * Blocked signals are never ignored, since the
- * signal handler may change by the time it is
- * unblocked.
- */
- if (sigismember(&t->blocked, sig))
- return 0;
-
/* Is it explicitly or implicitly ignored? */
handler = t->sighand->action[sig-1].sa.sa_handler;
return handler == SIG_IGN ||


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PROBLEM: Ignoring blocked signals in 2.6 / 2.4 not possible
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:10:01 +0100
From: <lk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: <lk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Hi,

I have a question regarding blocked signals:

Is the current implementation to ignore attempts to set SIG_IGN on
blocked signals correct? The following code will go into an endless loop on kernels 2.6.10 and
2.4.25, which is IMHO not the behaviour one would expect.

--------------------
#include <signal.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

volatile int sig_received = 0;

void sigio_handler_ex (int signum, siginfo_t * siginfo, void * ucontext)
{
struct sigaction sigio_action;

sig_received++;
printf("handler %d\n",sig_received);

sigio_action.sa_handler = SIG_IGN;
sigio_action.sa_flags = 0;
sigemptyset(&sigio_action.sa_mask);
sigaction (SIGIO, &sigio_action, 0);

kill(getpid(),SIGIO);

sigio_action.sa_sigaction = sigio_handler_ex;
sigio_action.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO;
sigemptyset(&sigio_action.sa_mask);
sigaction (SIGIO, &sigio_action, 0);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
struct sigaction sigio_action;
sigio_action.sa_sigaction = sigio_handler_ex;
sigio_action.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO;
sigemptyset(&sigio_action.sa_mask);

sigaction (SIGIO, &sigio_action, 0);

kill(getpid(),SIGIO);

while (! sig_received) {
printf("waiting for signal\n");
sleep(1);
}

kill(getpid(),SIGIO);

printf("%d signals handled\n",sig_received);
}

--------------------

In kernel 2.6.10/kernel/signal.c sig_ignored() I found this comment:
...
/*
* Blocked signals are never ignored, since the
* signal handler may change by the time it is
* unblocked.
*/

if (sigismember(&t->blocked, sig))
return 0;
...

so it seems this behaviour is intentional, but I don't understand
it. Why should it matter if a signal handler may change while blocked,
if it is ignored also, which is a user request?

The machine im writing this mail on runs with the above lines
commented out without any problems so far...

All this resulted from problems a customer had with implementing a
whole protocol-stack to a serially attached device in a
signal-handler. After the handler ran (with SIG_IGN) there was always
an extra SIGIO which triggered the handler again. Of course the real
fix was to move the protocol-stack out of the handler but still it
should have worked since it was a controlled environment (so there
wasn't even a race between entering the handler and setting
SIG_IGN). Oh and it worked for years under some realtime variant of
hp-unix.

Please be so kind to CC any answer to me directly since I'm
currently not subscribed to lkml.

Yours
Tobias Grundmann


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