Toward race-free process signaling
Toward race-free process signaling
Signals have existed in Unix systems for years, despite the general consensus that they are an example of a bad design. Extensions and new ways of using signals pop up from time to time, fixing the issues that have been found. A notable addition was the introduction of signalfd() nearly 10 years ago. Recently, the kernel developers have discussed how to avoid race conditions related to process-ID (PID) recycling, which occurs when a process terminates and another one is assigned the same PID. A process that fails to notice that its target has exited may try to send a signal to the wrong recipient, with potentially grave consequences. A patch set from Christian Brauner is trying to solve the issue by adding signaling via file descriptors.