xref: /illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man3c/sigstack.3c (revision dd72704bd9e794056c558153663c739e2012d721)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. gratefully acknowledges The Open Group for
permission to reproduce portions of its copyrighted documentation.
Original documentation from The Open Group can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and The Open
Group, have given us permission to reprint portions of their
documentation.

In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
in the SunOS Reference Manual, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6,
Copyright (C) 2001-2004 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy
between these versions 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.opengroup.org/unix/online.html.

This notice shall appear on any product containing this material.

The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions
and limitations under the License.

When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]


Copyright (c) 1992, X/Open Company Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Portions Copyright (c) 1996, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved

SIGSTACK 3C "Feb 28, 1996"
NAME
sigstack - set and/or get alternate signal stack context
SYNOPSIS

#include <signal.h>

int sigstack(struct sigstack *ss, struct sigstack *oss);
DESCRIPTION

The sigstack() function allows the calling process to indicate to the system an area of its address space to be used for processing signals received by the process.

If the ss argument is not a null pointer, it must point to a sigstack structure. The length of the application-supplied stack must be at least SIGSTKSZ bytes. If the alternate signal stack overflows, the resulting behavior is undefined. (See USAGE below.)

The value of the ss_onstack member indicates whether the process wants the system to use an alternate signal stack when delivering signals.

The value of the ss_sp member indicates the desired location of the alternate signal stack area in the process' address space.

If the ss argument is a null pointer, the current alternate signal stack context is not changed.

If the oss argument is not a null pointer, it points to a sigstack structure in which the current alternate signal stack context is placed. The value stored in the ss_onstack member of oss will be non-zero if the process is currently executing on the alternate signal stack. If the oss argument is a null pointer, the current alternate signal stack context is not returned.

When a signal's action indicates its handler should execute on the alternate signal stack (specified by calling sigaction(2)), sigstack() checks to see if the process is currently executing on that stack. If the process is not currently executing on the alternate signal stack, the system arranges a switch to the alternate signal stack for the duration of the signal handler's execution.

After a successful call to one of the exec functions, there are no alternate signal stacks in the new process image.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, sigstack() returns 0. Otherwise, it returns -1 and sets errno to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The sigstack() function will fail if: EPERM

An attempt was made to modify an active stack.

USAGE

A portable application, when being written or rewritten, should use sigaltstack(2) instead of sigstack().

The direction of stack growth is not indicated in the historical definition of struct sigstack. The only way to portably establish a stack pointer is for the application to determine stack growth direction, or to allocate a block of storage and set the stack pointer to the middle. sigstack() may assume that the size of the signal stack is SIGSTKSZ as found in <signal.h>. An application that would like to specify a signal stack size other than SIGSTKSZ should use sigaltstack(2).

Applications should not use longjmp(3C) to leave a signal handler that is running on a stack established with sigstack(). Doing so may disable future use of the signal stack. For abnormal exit from a signal handler, siglongjmp(3C), setcontext(2), or swapcontext(3C) may be used. These functions fully support switching from one stack to another.

The sigstack() function requires the application to have knowledge of the underlying system's stack architecture. For this reason, sigaltstack(2) is recommended over this function.

SEE ALSO

fork (2), sigaltstack (2), _longjmp (3C), longjmp (3C), setjmp (3C), siglongjmp (3C), sigsetjmp (3C)