*BSD News Article 79566


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news1.erols.com!hunter.premier.net!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: What is a zombie?
Date: 30 Sep 1996 06:57:24 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <52nr0k$baa@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <52a5dt$qef@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <3249D8F7.2EA39DDA@lambert.org>
  <52jtk1$8s@uriah.heep.sax.de> <324F080E.4BFCA0F@lambert.org>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669
X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F  93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E

Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote:

> ] Implementing SA_NOCLDWAIT for sa_flags in sigaction(2) would be the
> ] way to go, but nobody has done this so far in FreeBSD.  So your only
> ] chance is to actually install the d*mn signal handler, and have it
> ] fetch the exit status of the child.
> 
> Then FreeBSD is broken.  Someone with commit priveledges to the
> tree should commit the (trivial) fix.

It's not `broken' per se, since the API allows for various options.
They are called options since they are optional.  Would you call
SVR4's implementation `broken' since it doesn't implement SunOS'
SA_USERTRAMP option?  Btw., SA_SIGINFO isn't implemented in SVR4
either.  Btw^2, it has already been discussed that an implementation
where setting SIGCHLD to SIG_IGN has the same effect like SA_NOCLDWAIT
must be considered broken: SIGCHLD is already ignored, ignoring it
twice should not change anything in the behaviour.

Anyway, please use send-pr to submit your patches. ;-)

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)