NAME

       sigqueue - queue a signal to a process (REALTIME)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <signal.h>

       int sigqueue(pid_t pid, int signo, const union sigval value);

DESCRIPTION

       The  sigqueue() function shall cause the signal specified by signo to be sent with the value specified by
       value to the process specified by pid. If signo is zero (the null signal), error  checking  is  performed
       but no signal is actually sent. The null signal can be used to check the validity of pid.

       The  conditions  required  for  a process to have permission to queue a signal to another process are the
       same as for the kill() function.

       The sigqueue() function shall return immediately. If SA_SIGINFO is set for signo  and  if  the  resources
       were  available  to  queue  the  signal, the signal shall be queued and sent to the receiving process. If
       SA_SIGINFO is not set for signo, then signo shall be sent at least once to the receiving process;  it  is
       unspecified whether value shall be sent to the receiving process as a result of this call.

       If the value of pid causes signo to be generated for the sending process, and if signo is not blocked for
       the calling thread and if no other thread has signo unblocked or is waiting in a sigwait()  function  for
       signo,  either  signo  or at least the pending, unblocked signal shall be delivered to the calling thread
       before the sigqueue() function returns. Should any multiple pending signals  in  the  range  SIGRTMIN  to
       SIGRTMAX  be  selected  for  delivery,  it  shall be the lowest numbered one. The selection order between
       realtime and non-realtime signals, or between multiple pending non-realtime signals, is unspecified.

RETURN VALUE

       Upon successful completion, the specified signal shall have been  queued,  and  the  sigqueue()  function
       shall  return  a  value  of  zero.  Otherwise,  the  function shall return a value of -1 and set errno to
       indicate the error.

ERRORS

       The sigqueue() function shall fail if:

       EAGAIN No resources are available to queue the signal. The  process  has  already  queued  {SIGQUEUE_MAX}
              signals  that  are  still  pending  at  the  receiver(s), or a system-wide resource limit has been
              exceeded.

       EINVAL The value of the signo argument is an invalid or unsupported signal number.

       EPERM  The process does not have the appropriate privilege to send the signal to the receiving process.

       ESRCH  The process pid does not exist.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

       None.

APPLICATION USAGE

       None.

RATIONALE

       The sigqueue() function allows an application to queue a realtime signal to itself or to another process,
       specifying  the  application-defined  value. This is common practice in realtime applications on existing
       realtime systems. It was felt that specifying another function in the sig... name  space  already  carved
       out for signals was preferable to extending the interface to kill().

       Such  a  function  became necessary when the put/get event function of the message queues was removed. It
       should be noted that  the  sigqueue()  function  implies  reduced  performance  in  a  security-conscious
       implementation  as the access permissions between the sender and receiver have to be checked on each send
       when the pid is resolved into a target process. Such access checks were necessary only at  message  queue
       open in the previous interface.

       The  standard developers required that sigqueue() have the same semantics with respect to the null signal
       as kill(), and that the same permission checking be used. But because of the difficulty  of  implementing
       the  "broadcast"  semantic  of  kill() (for example, to process groups) and the interaction with resource
       allocation, this semantic was not adopted.  The sigqueue() function queues a signal to a  single  process
       specified by the pid argument.

       The  sigqueue()  function  can  fail  if  the  system  has insufficient resources to queue the signal. An
       explicit limit on the number of queued signals that a process could send was introduced.  While the limit
       is  "per-sender",  this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not specify that the resources be part of the
       state of the sender. This would require either that the sender be maintained after exit until all signals
       that  it  had  sent  to other processes were handled or that all such signals that had not yet been acted
       upon be removed from the queue(s) of the receivers. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not preclude
       this  behavior, but an implementation that allocated queuing resources from a system-wide pool (with per-
       sender limits) and that leaves queued signals pending after the sender exits is also permitted.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       Realtime Signals , the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, <signal.h>

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition,
       Standard  for  Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
       Inc  and  The  Open Group. 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.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .