CMU Computer Systems: Exceptional Control Flow (Signals and Nonlocal Jumps)

ECF Exists at All Levels of a System

• Exceptions
  • Hardware and operating system kernel software
• Process Context Switch
  • Hardware timer and kernel software
• Signals
  • Kernel software and application software
• Nonlocal jumps
  • Application code

ECF to the Rescue

• Solution: Exceptional control flow
  • The kernel will interrupt regular processing to alert us when a background process completes
  • In Unix, the alert mechanism is called a signed

Signals

• A signal is a small message that notifies a process that an event of some type has occurred in the system
  • Akin to exceptions and interrupts
  • Sent from the kernel to a process
  • Signal type is identified by small integer ID’s
  • Only information in a signal is its ID and the fact that it arrived

Signal Concepts: Sending a Signal

• Kernel sends a signal to a destination process by updating some state in the context of the destination process
• Reasons
  • Kernel has detected a system event such as divide-by-zero or the termination of a child process
  • Another process has invoked the kill system call to explicitly request the kernel to send a signal to the destination process

Signal Concepts: Receiving a Signal

• A destination process receives a signal when it is forced by the kernel to react in some way to the delivery of the signal
• Some possible ways to react
  • Ignore the signal
  • Terminate the process
  • Catch the signal by executing a user-level function call signal handler

Signal Concepts: Pending and Blocked Signals

• A signal is pending if sent but not yet received
  • There can be at most one pending signal of any particular type
  • Signals are not queued
    • If a process has a pending signal of type k, then subsequent signals of type k that are sent to that process are discarded
• A process can block the receipt of certain signals
  • Blocked signals can be delivered, but will not be received until the signal is unblocked
• A pending signal is received at most once

Signal Concepts: Pending/ Blocked Bits

• Kernel maintains pending and blocked bit vectors in the context of each process
  • pending: represents the set of pending signals
    • Kernel sets bit k in pending when a signal of type k is delivered
    • Kernel clears bit k in pending when a signal of type k is received
  • blocked: represents the set of blocked signals
    • Can be set and cleared by using the sigprocmask function
    • Also referred to as the signal mask

Receiving Signals

• Suppose kernel is returning from an exception handler and is ready to pass control to process p
• Kernel computes pnb = pending & ~blocked
  • The set of pending nonblocked signals for process p
• if (pnb == 0)
  • Pass control to next instruction in the logical flow for p
• Else
  • Choose least nonzero bit k in pnb and force process p to receive signal k
  • The receipt of the signal triggers some action by p
  • Repeat for all nonzero k in pnb
  • Pass control to next instruction in logical flow for p

Nested Signal Handlers

• Handlers can be interrupted by other handlers

Blocking and Unblocking Signals

• Implicit blocking mechanism
  • Kernel blocks any pending signals of type currently being handled
• Explicit blocking and unblocking mechanism
  • sigprocmask function
• Supporting functions
  • sigemptyset - create empty set
  • sigfillset - add every signal number to set
  • sigaddset - add signal number to set
  • sigdelset - delete signal number from set

Guidelines for Writing Safe Handlers

• Keep your handlers as simple as possible
• Call only async-signal-safe functions in your handlers
• Save and restore errno on entry and exit
• Protect accesses to shared data structures by temporarily blocking all signals
• Declare global variables as volatile
• Declare global flags as volatile sig_atomic_t