xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/procdesc.4 (revision d1d015864103b253b3fcb2f72a0da5b0cfeb31b6)
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2.\" Copyright (c) 2013 Robert N. M. Watson
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30.\" $FreeBSD$
31.\"
32.Dd August 21, 2013
33.Dt PROCDESC 4
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm procdesc
37.Nd process descriptor facility
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Cd "options PROCDESC"
40.Sh DESCRIPTION
41.Nm
42is a file-descriptor-oriented interface to process signalling and control,
43which supplements historic
44.Ux
45.Xr fork 2 ,
46.Xr kill 2 ,
47and
48.Xr wait4 2
49primitives with
50new system calls such as
51.Xr pdfork 2 ,
52.Xr pdkill 2 ,
53and
54.Xr pdwait4 2 .
55.Nm
56is designed for use with
57.Xr capsicum 4 ,
58replacing process identifiers with capability-oriented references.
59However, it can also be used independently of
60.Xr capsicum 4 ,
61displacing PIDs, which may otherwise suffer from race conditions.
62Given a process descriptor, it is possible to query its conventional PID using
63.Xr pdgetpid 2 .
64.Sh SEE ALSO
65.Xr fork 2 ,
66.Xr kill 2 ,
67.Xr wait4 2 ,
68.Xr pdfork 2 ,
69.Xr pdgetpid 2 ,
70.Xr pdkill 2 ,
71.Xr pdwait4 2 ,
72.Xr capsicum 4
73.Sh HISTORY
74.Nm
75first appeared in
76.Fx 9.0 ,
77and was developed at the University of Cambridge.
78.Sh AUTHORS
79.Nm
80was developed by
81.An -nosplit
82.An "Robert Watson" Aq rwatson@FreeBSD.org
83and
84.An "Jonathan Anderson" Aq jonathan@FreeBSD.org
85at the University of Cambridge, and
86.An "Ben Laurie" Aq benl@FreeBSD.org
87and
88.An "Kris Kennaway" Aq kris@FreeBSD.org
89at Google, Inc.
90.Sh BUGS
91.Nm
92is considered experimental in
93.Fx .
94