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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
sigaction — examine and change a signal action
SYNOPSIS
#include <signal.h>
int sigaction(int sig, const struct sigaction *restrict act,
struct sigaction *restrict oact);
DESCRIPTION
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 set, and sig equals SIGCHLD, child processes of the calling processes
shall not be transformed into zombie processes when they terminate. If the
calling process subsequently waits for its children, and the process has no
unwaited-for children that were transformed into zombie processes, it shall
block until all of its children terminate, and wait(), waitid(), and
waitpid() shall fail and set errno to [ECHILD]. Otherwise, terminating
child processes shall be transformed into zombie processes, unless SIGCHLD
is set to SIG_IGN.
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
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
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.
ENOTSUP
The SA_SIGINFO bit flag is set in the sa_flags field of the sigaction structure.
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, 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
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
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.1‐2008,
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(), sem_init(),
sem_open(), 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.1‐2008 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.1‐2008 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.1‐2008. 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.1‐2008, Section B.2.4.2, Signal Generation and Delivery.
RATIONALE
Although this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 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.1‐2008.
This volume of POSIX.1‐2008 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.1‐2008 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
None.
SEE ALSO
Section 2.4, Signal Concepts, exec, kill(), _longjmp(), longjmp(), pthread_sigmask(),
raise(), semget(), sem_init(), sem_open(), sigaddset(), sigaltstack(), sigdelset(),
sigemptyset(), sigfillset(), sigismember(), signal(), sigsuspend(), wait(), waitid()
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <signal.h>
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std
1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) 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.unix.org/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 .