Re: signalfd API issues (was Re: [PATCH/RFC] signal races/bugs, losing TIF_SIGPENDING and other woes)

[Nicholas Miell <nmiell@comcast.net>]

On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 20:37 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Davide Libenzi wrote:
> > On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > > 
> > > Yeah, synchronous signals should probably never be delivered to another
> > > process, even via signalfd. There's no point delivering a SEGV to
> > > somebody else :-)
> > 
> > That'd be a limitation. Like you can choose to not handle SEGV, you can 
> > choose to have a signalfd listening to it. Of course, not with the 
> > intention to *handle* the signal, but with a notification intent.
> 
> I agree that it would be a limitation, but it would be a sane one.
> 
> How about we try to live with that limitation, if only to avoid the issue 
> of having the private signals being stolen by anybody else. If we actually 
> find a real-live use-case where that is bad in the future, we can re-visit 
> the issue - it's always easier to _expand_ semantics later than it is to 
> restrict them, so I think this thread is a good argument for starting it 
> out in a more restricted form before people start depending on semantics 
> that can be nasty..
> 
> 		Linus

Proposed semantics:

a) Process-global signals can be read by any thread (inside or outside
of the process receiving the signal).

Rationale:
	This should always work, so there's no reason to limit it.

b) Thread-specific signals can only be read by their target thread.

Rationale:
	This behavior is required by POSIX, and if an application is using
pthread_kill()/tkill()/tgkill()/etc. to specifically direct a signal, it
damn well better get to where the app wants it to go.

c) Synchronous signals ("Naturally" generated SIGILL, SIGFPE, SIGSEGV,
SIGBUS, and SIGTRAP. Did I miss any?) are not delivered via signalfd()
at all. (And by "naturally" generated, I mean signals that would have
the SI_KERNEL flag set.)

Rationale: 
	These are a subset of thread-specific signals, so they can only be read
from a signalfd by their target thread.

However, there's no way for the target thread to get the signal because
it is either:

a) not blocked in a syscall waiting for signal delivery and thus further
execution beyond the instruction causing the signal is impossible
 OR
b) it is blocked in a syscall waiting for signal delivery and the error
is caused by the signal delivery mechanism itself (i.e. a bad pointer
passed to read/select/poll/epoll_wait/etc.) and thus the signal can't be
delivered

-- 
Nicholas Miell <nmiell@comcast.net>

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