SIGTIMEDWAIT(3P) POSIX Programmer's Manual SIGTIMEDWAIT(3P)PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
sigtimedwait, sigwaitinfo — wait for queued signals
SYNOPSIS
#include <signal.h>
int sigtimedwait(const sigset_t *restrict set,
siginfo_t *restrict info,
const struct timespec *restrict timeout);
int sigwaitinfo(const sigset_t *restrict set,
siginfo_t *restrict info);
DESCRIPTION
The sigtimedwait() function shall be equivalent to sigwaitinfo() except
that if none of the signals specified by set are pending, sigtimed‐
wait() shall wait for the time interval specified in the timespec
structure referenced by timeout. If the timespec structure pointed to
by timeout is zero-valued and if none of the signals specified by set
are pending, then sigtimedwait() shall return immediately with an
error. If timeout is the null pointer, the behavior is unspecified. If
the Monotonic Clock option is supported, the CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock
shall be used to measure the time interval specified by the timeout
argument.
The sigwaitinfo() function selects the pending signal from the set
specified by set. Should any of multiple pending signals in the range
SIGRTMIN to SIGRTMAX be selected, it shall be the lowest numbered one.
The selection order between realtime and non-realtime signals, or
between multiple pending non-realtime signals, is unspecified. If no
signal in set is pending at the time of the call, the calling thread
shall be suspended until one or more signals in set become pending or
until it is interrupted by an unblocked, caught signal.
The sigwaitinfo() function shall be equivalent to the sigwait() func‐
tion if the info argument is NULL. If the info argument is non-NULL,
the sigwaitinfo() function shall be equivalent to sigwait(), except
that the selected signal number shall be stored in the si_signo member,
and the cause of the signal shall be stored in the si_code member. If
any value is queued to the selected signal, the first such queued value
shall be dequeued and, if the info argument is non-NULL, the value
shall be stored in the si_value member of info. The system resource
used to queue the signal shall be released and returned to the system
for other use. If no value is queued, the content of the si_value mem‐
ber is undefined. If no further signals are queued for the selected
signal, the pending indication for that signal shall be reset.
RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion (that is, one of the signals specified by
set is pending or is generated) sigwaitinfo() and sigtimedwait() shall
return the selected signal number. Otherwise, the function shall return
a value of −1 and set errno to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The sigtimedwait() function shall fail if:
EAGAIN No signal specified by set was generated within the specified
timeout period.
The sigtimedwait() and sigwaitinfo() functions may fail if:
EINTR The wait was interrupted by an unblocked, caught signal. It
shall be documented in system documentation whether this error
causes these functions to fail.
The sigtimedwait() function may also fail if:
EINVAL The timeout argument specified a tv_nsec value less than zero or
greater than or equal to 1000 million.
An implementation should only check for this error if no signal is
pending in set and it is necessary to wait.
The following sections are informative.
EXAMPLES
None.
APPLICATION USAGE
The sigtimedwait() function times out and returns an [EAGAIN] error.
Application developers should note that this is inconsistent with other
functions such as pthread_cond_timedwait() that return [ETIMEDOUT].
Note that in order to ensure that generated signals are queued and sig‐
nal values passed to sigqueue() are available in si_value, applications
which use sigwaitinfo() or sigtimedwait() need to set the SA_SIGINFO
flag for each signal in the set (see Section 2.4, Signal Concepts).
This means setting each signal to be handled by a three-argument sig‐
nal-catching function, even if the handler will never be called. It is
not possible (portably) to set a signal handler to SIG_DFL while set‐
ting the SA_SIGINFO flag, because assigning to the sa_handler member of
struct sigaction instead of the sa_sigaction member would result in
undefined behavior, and SIG_DFL need not be assignment-compatible with
sa_sigaction. Even if an assignment of SIG_DFL to sa_sigaction is
accepted by the compiler, the implementation need not treat this value
as special—it could just be taken as the address of a signal-catching
function.
RATIONALE
Existing programming practice on realtime systems uses the ability to
pause waiting for a selected set of events and handle the first event
that occurs in-line instead of in a signal-handling function. This
allows applications to be written in an event-directed style similar to
a state machine. This style of programming is useful for largescale
transaction processing in which the overall throughput of an applica‐
tion and the ability to clearly track states are more important than
the ability to minimize the response time of individual event handling.
It is possible to construct a signal-waiting macro function out of the
realtime signal function mechanism defined in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008. However, such a macro has to include the definition of a
generalized handler for all signals to be waited on. A significant por‐
tion of the overhead of handler processing can be avoided if the sig‐
nal-waiting function is provided by the kernel. This volume of
POSIX.1‐2008 therefore provides two signal-waiting functions—one that
waits indefinitely and one with a timeout—as part of the overall real‐
time signal function specification.
The specification of a function with a timeout allows an application to
be written that can be broken out of a wait after a set period of time
if no event has occurred. It was argued that setting a timer event
before the wait and recognizing the timer event in the wait would also
implement the same functionality, but at a lower performance level.
Because of the performance degradation associated with the user-level
specification of a timer event and the subsequent cancellation of that
timer event after the wait completes for a valid event, and the com‐
plexity associated with handling potential race conditions associated
with the user-level method, the separate function has been included.
Note that the semantics of the sigwaitinfo() function are nearly iden‐
tical to that of the sigwait() function defined by this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008. The only difference is that sigwaitinfo() returns the
queued signal value in the value argument. The return of the queued
value is required so that applications can differentiate between multi‐
ple events queued to the same signal number.
The two distinct functions are being maintained because some implemen‐
tations may choose to implement the POSIX Threads Extension functions
and not implement the queued signals extensions. Note, though, that
sigwaitinfo() does not return the queued value if the value argument is
NULL, so the POSIX Threads Extension sigwait() function can be imple‐
mented as a macro on sigwaitinfo().
The sigtimedwait() function was separated from the sigwaitinfo() func‐
tion to address concerns regarding the overloading of the timeout
pointer to indicate indefinite wait (no timeout), timed wait, and imme‐
diate return, and concerns regarding consistency with other functions
where the conditional and timed waits were separate functions from the
pure blocking function. The semantics of sigtimedwait() are specified
such that sigwaitinfo() could be implemented as a macro with a null
pointer for timeout.
The sigwait functions provide a synchronous mechanism for threads to
wait for asynchronously-generated signals. One important question was
how many threads that are suspended in a call to a sigwait() function
for a signal should return from the call when the signal is sent. Four
choices were considered:
1. Return an error for multiple simultaneous calls to sigwait func‐
tions for the same signal.
2. One or more threads return.
3. All waiting threads return.
4. Exactly one thread returns.
Prohibiting multiple calls to sigwait() for the same signal was felt to
be overly restrictive. The ``one or more'' behavior made implementation
of conforming packages easy at the expense of forcing POSIX threads
clients to protect against multiple simultaneous calls to sigwait() in
application code in order to achieve predictable behavior. There was
concern that the ``all waiting threads'' behavior would result in
``signal broadcast storms'', consuming excessive CPU resources by
replicating the signals in the general case. Furthermore, no convincing
examples could be presented that delivery to all was either simpler or
more powerful than delivery to one.
Thus, the consensus was that exactly one thread that was suspended in a
call to a sigwait function for a signal should return when that signal
occurs. This is not an onerous restriction as:
* A multi-way signal wait can be built from the single-way wait.
* Signals should only be handled by application-level code, as
library routines cannot guess what the application wants to do with
signals generated for the entire process.
* Applications can thus arrange for a single thread to wait for any
given signal and call any needed routines upon its arrival.
In an application that is using signals for interprocess communication,
signal processing is typically done in one place. Alternatively, if the
signal is being caught so that process cleanup can be done, the signal
handler thread can call separate process cleanup routines for each por‐
tion of the application. Since the application main line started each
portion of the application, it is at the right abstraction level to
tell each portion of the application to clean up.
Certainly, there exist programming styles where it is logical to con‐
sider waiting for a single signal in multiple threads. A simple sig‐
wait_multiple() routine can be constructed to achieve this goal. A pos‐
sible implementation would be to have each sigwait_multiple() caller
registered as having expressed interest in a set of signals. The call‐
er then waits on a thread-specific condition variable. A single server
thread calls a sigwait() function on the union of all registered sig‐
nals. When the sigwait() function returns, the appropriate state is set
and condition variables are broadcast. New sigwait_multiple() callers
may cause the pending sigwait() call to be canceled and reissued in
order to update the set of signals being waited for.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
Section 2.4, Signal Concepts, Section 2.8.1, Realtime Signals, pause(),
pthread_sigmask(), sigaction(), sigpending(), sigsuspend(), sigwait()
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <signal.h>, <time.h>
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
cal and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
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IEEE/The Open Group 2013 SIGTIMEDWAIT(3P)
