The Linux Kernel Signals amp; Interrupts.ppt

The Linux Kernel: Signals Interrupts Signals Introduced in UNIX systems to simplify IPC. Used by the kernel to notify processes of system events. A signal is a short message sent to a process, or group of processes, containing the number identifying the signal. No data is delivered with traditional signals. POSIX.4 defines i/f for queueing ordering RT signals w/ arguments. Example Signals Linux supports 31 non-real-time signals. POSIX standard defines a range of values for RT signals: SIGRTMIN 32 … SIGRTMAX (_NSIG-1) in asm-*/signal.h Signal Transmission Signal sending: Kernel updates descriptor of destination process. Signal receiving: Kernel forces target process to “handle” signal. Pending signals are sent but not yet received. Up to one pending signal per type for each process, except for POSIX.4 signals. Subsequent signals are discarded. Signals can be blocked, i.e., prevented from being received. Signal-Related Data Structures sigset_t stores array of signals sent to a process. The process descriptor (struct task_struct in linux/sched.h) has several fields for tracking sent, blocked and pending signals. Sending Signals A signal is sent due to occurrence of corresponding event (see kernel/signal.c). e.g., send_sig_info(int sig, struct siginfo *info, struct task_struct *t); sig is signal number. info is either: address of RT signal structure. 0, if user mode process is signal sender. 1, if kernel is signal sender. e.g., kill_proc_info(int sig, struct siginfo *info, pid_t pid); Receiving Signals Before process p resumes execution in user mode, kernel checks for pending non-blocked signals for p. Done in entry.S by call to ret_from_intr(), which is invoked after handling an interrupt or exception. do_signal() repeatedly invokes dequeue_signal() until no more non-blocked pending signals are left. If the signal is not ignored, or the default action is not performed, the signal must be caught. Catching Signals handle_signal() is invoked by do_signal() to execut