Re: For review: pidfd_send_signal(2) manual page

From: Florian Weimer
Date: Mon Sep 23 2019 - 07:26:51 EST


* 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 termiâ
> nated and its PID has been recycled for another process. By conâ
> 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.