xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/procdesc.4 (revision fcb560670601b2a4d87bb31d7531c8dcc37ee71b)
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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 DESCRIPTION
39.Nm
40is a file-descriptor-oriented interface to process signalling and control,
41which supplements historic
42.Ux
43.Xr fork 2 ,
44.Xr kill 2 ,
45and
46.Xr wait4 2
47primitives with
48new system calls such as
49.Xr pdfork 2 ,
50.Xr pdkill 2 ,
51and
52.Xr pdwait4 2 .
53.Nm
54is designed for use with
55.Xr capsicum 4 ,
56replacing process identifiers with capability-oriented references.
57However, it can also be used independently of
58.Xr capsicum 4 ,
59displacing PIDs, which may otherwise suffer from race conditions.
60Given a process descriptor, it is possible to query its conventional PID using
61.Xr pdgetpid 2 .
62.Sh SEE ALSO
63.Xr fork 2 ,
64.Xr kill 2 ,
65.Xr pdfork 2 ,
66.Xr pdgetpid 2 ,
67.Xr pdkill 2 ,
68.Xr pdwait4 2 ,
69.Xr wait4 2 ,
70.Xr capsicum 4
71.Sh HISTORY
72.Nm
73first appeared in
74.Fx 9.0 ,
75and was developed at the University of Cambridge.
76.Sh AUTHORS
77.Nm
78was developed by
79.An -nosplit
80.An Robert Watson Aq Mt rwatson@FreeBSD.org
81and
82.An Jonathan Anderson Aq Mt jonathan@FreeBSD.org
83at the University of Cambridge, and
84.An Ben Laurie Aq Mt benl@FreeBSD.org
85and
86.An Kris Kennaway Aq Mt kris@FreeBSD.org
87at Google, Inc.
88.Sh BUGS
89.Nm
90is considered experimental in
91.Fx .
92