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sigaction(2)							  sigaction(2)

NAME
       sigaction - detailed signal management

SYNOPSIS
       #include	<signal.h>

       int  sigaction(int  sig,	 const	struct sigaction *restrict act,	struct
       sigaction *restrict oact);

       The sigaction() function	allows the calling process to examine or spec-
       ify  the	 action	to be taken on delivery	of a specific signal. See sig-
       nal.h(3HEAD) for	an explanation of general signal concepts.

       The sig argument	specifies the signal and can be	assigned  any  of  the
       signals specified in signal.h(3HEAD) except  SIGKILL and	SIGSTOP.

       If  the	argument act is	not NULL, it points to a structure  specifying
       the new action to be taken when delivering sig. If the argument oact is
       not  NULL, it points to a structure where the action previously associ-
       ated with sig is	to be stored on	return from sigaction().

       The sigaction structure includes	the following members:

       void	 (*sa_handler)();
       void	 (*sa_sigaction)(int, siginfo_t	*, void	*);
       sigset_t	 sa_mask;
       int	 sa_flags;

       The storage occupied by sa_handler and sa_sigaction may overlap,	and  a
       standard-conforming  application	 (see  standards(5)) must not use both
       simultaneously.

       The sa_handler member identifies	the action to be associated  with  the
       specified signal, if the	 SA_SIGINFO flag (see below) is	cleared	in the
       sa_flags	field of the sigaction structure. It may take any of the  val-
       ues  specified  in  signal.h(3HEAD)  or that of a user specified	signal
       handler.	If the	SA_SIGINFO flag	is set	in  the	 sa_flags  field,  the
       sa_sigaction field specifies a signal-catching function.

       The  sa_mask  member specifies a	set of signals to be blocked while the
       signal handler is active. On entry to the signal	handler, that  set  of
       signals	is  added to the set of	signals	already	being blocked when the
       signal is delivered. In addition, the signal that caused	the handler to
       be  executed will also be blocked, unless the  SA_NODEFER flag has been
       specified. SIGSTOP and  SIGKILL cannot be blocked (the system  silently
       enforces	this restriction).

       The  sa_flags member specifies a	set of flags used to modify the	deliv-
       ery of the signal. It is	formed by a logical OR of any of the following
       values:

       SA_ONSTACK      If set and the signal is	caught,	and if the thread that
		       is chosen to processes a	delivered signal has an	alter-
		       nate signal stack declared with sigaltstack(2), then it
		       will process the	signal on that stack.  Otherwise,  the
		       signal is delivered on the thread's normal stack.

       SA_RESETHAND    If set and the signal is	caught,	the disposition	of the
		       signal is reset to SIG_DFL and the signal will  not  be
		       blocked	on  entry  to the signal handler (SIGILL, SIG-
		       TRAP, and SIGPWR	cannot be   automatically  reset  when
		       delivered;  the	system silently	enforces this restric-
		       tion).

       SA_NODEFER      If set and the signal is	caught,	the signal will	not be
		       automatically  blocked  by the kernel while it is being
		       caught.

       SA_RESTART      If set and the signal is	caught,	functions that are in-
		       terrupted by the	execution of this signal's handler are
		       transparently restarted by the system, namely fcntl(2),
		       ioctl(2),  wait(3C), waitid(2), and the following func-
		       tions on	slow  devices  like  terminals:	 getmsg()  and
		       getpmsg() (see getmsg(2));  putmsg() and	putpmsg() (see
		       putmsg(2)); pread(), read(), and	readv()	(see read(2));
		       pwrite(), write(), and writev() (see write(2)); recv(),
		       recvfrom(),  and	 recvmsg()  (see  recv(3SOCKET));  and
		       send(),	sendto(),  and	sendmsg()  (see	send(3SOCKET).
		       Otherwise, the function returns an EINTR	error.

       SA_SIGINFO      If cleared and the signal is caught, sig	is  passed  as
		       the  only  argument to the signal-catching function. If
		       set and the signal is caught,  two additional arguments
		       are  passed  to	the  signal-catching function.	If the
		       second argument is not equal to NULL, it	 points	 to  a
		       siginfo_t  structure containing the reason why the sig-
		       nal was generated (see siginfo.h(3HEAD)); the third ar-
		       gument  points to a ucontext_t structure	containing the
		       receiving process's context when	the signal was	deliv-
		       ered (see ucontext.h(3HEAD)).

       SA_NOCLDWAIT    If  set	and  sig  equals  SIGCHLD, the system will not
		       create zombie processes when children  of  the  calling
		       process	exit.  If the calling process subsequently is-
		       sues a wait(3C),	it blocks until	 all  of  the  calling
		       process's  child	 processes terminate, and then returns
		       -1 with errno set to ECHILD.

       SA_NOCLDSTOP    If set and sig equals SIGCHLD, SIGCHLD will not be sent
		       to the calling process when its child processes stop or
		       continue.

       Upon successful completion, 0 is	returned. Otherwise, -1	 is  returned,
       errno  is  set  to indicate the error, and no new signal	handler	is in-
       stalled.

       The sigaction() function	will fail if:

       EINVAL	       The value of the	sig argument is	 not  a	 valid	signal
		       number or is equal to  SIGKILL or SIGSTOP. In addition,
		       if in a multithreaded process, it is equal to  SIGWAIT-
		       ING, SIGCANCEL, or SIGLWP.

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE	TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Standard			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |MT-Level		     |Async-Signal-Safe		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

       kill(1),	 intro(2),  exit(2),  fcntl(2),	 getmsg(2), ioctl(2), kill(2),
       pause(2),   putmsg(2),	read(2),    sigaltstack(2),    sigprocmask(2),
       sigsend(2),    sigsuspend(2),   waitid(2),   write(2),	recv(3SOCKET),
       send(3SOCKET), siginfo.h(3HEAD),	 signal(3C),  signal.h(3HEAD),	sigse-
       tops(3C), ucontext.h(3HEAD), wait(3C), attributes(5), standards(5)

       The handler routine can be declared:

       void handler (int sig, siginfo_t	*sip, ucontext_t *ucp);

       The  sig	 argument  is the signal number. The sip argument is a pointer
       (to space on the	stack) to a siginfo_t structure, which provides	 addi-
       tional  detail  about the delivery of the signal. The ucp argument is a
       pointer (again to space on the stack) to	a  ucontext_t  structure  (de-
       fined  in  <sys/ucontext.h>) which contains the context from before the
       signal.	It is not recommended that ucp be used by the handler  to  re-
       store the context from before the signal	delivery.

				  23 Mar 2005			  sigaction(2)

NAME | SYNOPSIS

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