On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 09:26 +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 14:53 +1300, Michael Kerrisk wrote:
> > static void
> > handler(int sig, siginfo_t *si, void *uc)
> > {
> > /* Note: calling printf() from a signal handler is not
> > strictly correct, since printf() is not async-signal-safe;
> > see signal(7) */
> >
> > printf("Caught signal %d\n", sig);
> > print_siginfo(si);
> > signal(SIG, SIG_IGN);
> > }
>
> Is that actually safe to do?
>
> I can remember getting into deadlocks by doing this some few years ago.
>
> The problem was that glibc uses a mutex to guard its memory area for the
> malloc memory pool, and signals can come in while the main thread of
> execution is within that mutex, if at that point the signal handler also
> tries to use anything using malloc (here, I was thinking printf()
> might), you've got a deadlock.
>
> One thing I always enjoyed about the QNX man-pages was that it
> explicitly states which functions are and are _NOT_ signal safe, iow
> which functions can be reliably used from signal handler context.
Right, so maybe if I had read the comment this time... I'm so trained to
ignore comments in code :-)
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