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12.8. Threads and SignalsDealing with signals can be complicated even with a process-based paradigm. Introducing threads into the picture makes things even more complicated. Each thread has its own signal mask, but the signal disposition is shared by all threads in the process. This means that individual threads can block signals, but when a thread modifies the action associated with a given signal, all threads share the action. Thus, if one thread chooses to ignore a given signal, another thread can undo that choice by restoring the default disposition or installing a signal handler for the signal. Signals are delivered to a single thread in the process. If the signal is related to a hardware fault or expiring timer, the signal is sent to the thread whose action caused the event. Other signals, on the other hand, are delivered to an arbitrary thread. In Section 10.12, we discussed how processes can use sigprocmask to block signals from delivery. The behavior of sigprocmask is undefined in a multithreaded process. Threads have to use pthread_sigmask instead.
The pthread_sigmask function is identical to sigprocmask, except that pthread_sigmask works with threads and returns an error code on failure instead of setting errno and returning -1. A thread can wait for one or more signals to occur by calling sigwait.
The set argument specifies the set of signals for which the thread is waiting. On return, the integer to which signop points will contain the number of the signal that was delivered. If one of the signals specified in the set is pending at the time sigwait is called, then sigwait will return without blocking. Before returning, sigwait removes the signal from the set of signals pending for the process. To avoid erroneous behavior, a thread must block the signals it is waiting for before calling sigwait. The sigwait function will atomically unblock the signals and wait until one is delivered. Before returning, sigwait will restore the thread's signal mask. If the signals are not blocked at the time that sigwait is called, then a timing window is opened up where one of the signals can be delivered to the thread before it completes its call to sigwait. The advantage to using sigwait is that it can simplify signal handling by allowing us to treat asynchronously-generated signals in a synchronous manner. We can prevent the signals from interrupting the threads by adding them to each thread's signal mask. Then we can dedicate specific threads to handling the signals. These dedicated threads can make function calls without having to worry about which functions are safe to call from a signal handler, because they are being called from normal thread context, not from a traditional signal handler interrupting a normal thread's execution. If multiple threads are blocked in calls to sigwait for the same signal, only one of the threads will return from sigwait when the signal is delivered. If a signal is being caught (the process has established a signal handler by using sigaction, for example) and a thread is waiting for the same signal in a call to sigwait, it is left up to the implementation to decide which way to deliver the signal. In this case, the implementation could either allow sigwait to return or invoke the signal handler, but not both. To send a signal to a process, we call kill (Section 10.9). To send a signal to a thread, we call pthread_kill.
We can pass a signo value of 0 to check for existence of the thread. If the default action for a signal is to terminate the process, then sending the signal to a thread will still kill the entire process. Note that alarm timers are a process resource, and all threads share the same set of alarms. Thus, it is not possible for multiple threads in a process to use alarm timers without interfering (or cooperating) with one another (this is the subject of Exercise 12.6). ExampleRecall that in Figure 10.23, we waited for the signal handler to set a flag indicating that the main program should exit. The only threads of control that could run were the main thread and the signal handler, so blocking the signals was sufficient to avoid missing a change to the flag. With threads, we need to use a mutex to protect the flag, as we show in the program in Figure 12.16. Instead of relying on a signal handler that interrupts the main thread of control, we dedicate a separate thread of control to handle the signals. We change the value of quitflag under the protection of a mutex so that the main thread of control can't miss the wake-up call made when we call pthread_cond_signal. We use the same mutex in the main thread of control to check the value of the flag, and atomically release the mutex and wait for the condition. Note that we block SIGINT and SIGQUIT in the beginning of the main thread. When we create the thread to handle signals, the thread inherits the current signal mask. Since sigwait will unblock the signals, only one thread is available to receive signals. This enables us to code the main thread without having to worry about interrupts from these signals. If we run this program, we get output similar to that from Figure 10.23:
$ ./a.out
^? type the interrupt character
interrupt
^? type the interrupt character again
interrupt
^? and again
interrupt
^\ $ now terminate with quit character
Figure 12.16. Synchronous signal handling
#include "apue.h"
#include <pthread.h>
int quitflag; /* set nonzero by thread */
sigset_t mask;
pthread_mutex_t lock = PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER;
pthread_cond_t wait = PTHREAD_COND_INITIALIZER;
void *
thr_fn(void *arg)
{
int err, signo;
for (;;) {
err = sigwait(&mask, &signo);
if (err != 0)
err_exit(err, "sigwait failed");
switch (signo) {
case SIGINT:
printf("\ninterrupt\n");
break;
case SIGQUIT:
pthread_mutex_lock(&lock);
quitflag = 1;
pthread_mutex_unlock(&lock);
pthread_cond_signal(&wait);
return(0);
default:
printf("unexpected signal %d\n", signo);
exit(1);
}
}
}
int
main(void)
{
int err;
sigset_t oldmask;
pthread_t tid;
sigemptyset(&mask);
sigaddset(&mask, SIGINT);
sigaddset(&mask, SIGQUIT);
if ((err = pthread_sigmask(SIG_BLOCK, &mask, &oldmask)) != 0)
err_exit(err, "SIG_BLOCK error");
err = pthread_create(&tid, NULL, thr_fn, 0);
if (err != 0)
err_exit(err, "can't create thread");
pthread_mutex_lock(&lock);
while (quitflag == 0)
pthread_cond_wait(&wait, &lock);
pthread_mutex_unlock(&lock);
/* SIGQUIT has been caught and is now blocked; do whatever */
quitflag = 0;
/* reset signal mask which unblocks SIGQUIT */
if (sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, &oldmask, NULL) < 0)
err_sys("SIG_SETMASK error");
exit(0);
}
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*restrict