Catching Signals and Pausing with Character Device Drivers - c

Question

I'm a student new to C Programming and am not fully understanding how signal catching works, and in line with character device drivers. I'd appreciate some help but I need to state that this is for a project that is due in my first C Programming class. So I have not posted any direct code, only an example of my initial approach.
My project needs to accept a signal input and set that signal to a variable to pass to my character device driver. Another program I've written will need to access that variable's value such that when read, it performs a certain outcome. I've tried to run my control program (<name> &) but it quits immediately. I double check by entering ps into my command prompt and the process is gone.
Basically I need my control program to pause and wait for the signal to be received. Once received, if the signal matches it will set a variable to its value. Otherwise, if it is SIGTERM it will either end or pause(), where it will wait until another signal is received that meets another condition. Currently, when I compile and run it with & it simply runs and quits. Here is an example of my code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
static int file_state; //variable to pass to the driver for recording
void sig_handler(int sig);
void sig_handler(int sig){
while(1){
if(sig == SIGRTMIN){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN\n");
file_state = 0;
}else if(sig == SIGRTMIN+1){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN1\n");
file_state = 1;
}else if(sig == SIGTERM){
printf("Exiting\n");
exit(0); //exit
}else{
printf("SIG = %i\n", sig);
pause(); //doesn't match, pause for next signal
}
}
}
int main(){
signal(SIGINT, sig_handler);
//return 0; //tried with and without
}
I'm waiting until this daemon receives a signal to put the device driver into a particular mode. I haven't entered any write() methods yet because I'm trying to take this one step at a time where I send a signal with kill() and the proper response is returned with printf().
My problem is that I can't seem to keep this in pause() mode while I'm waiting for a signal that breaks the if loop. What's worse (other than my lack of knowledge and programming) is that I can't even keep this daemon open long enough to attempt a signal send. Once I can get this to pause and receive the signal, I plan to use the system write() method to write my file_state variable to the /dev/<filename>, which will be cross-referenced in my executable.
How far off am I? This is the final part that (I believe) I'm stuck on and I can't figure out how this should be approached. I've looked online and about 95% of the examples that delve into this contain methods we haven't learned yet. And if not, the examples are more simplistic where they do not include passing a value to a character device driver for use when another program is using the driver.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
ETA
I've updated my code so now it stays open until a signal is received. Problem is that I want this to pause() and remain open until the SIGTERM signal is received, breaking the loop and ending the program. I can't seem to get the loop correct. Even entering a conditional int variable into the while() loop still is broken when any signal is received. Here is my updated code below:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
static int file_state; //variable to pass to the driver for recording
int keep_alive = 1; //added for conditional checking to keep the while
//loop open to receive more than one signal
void sig_handler(int sig);
void sig_handler(int sig){
if(sig == SIGRTMIN){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN\n");
file_state = 0;
}else if(sig == SIGRTMIN+1){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN1\n");
file_state = 1;
}else if(sig == SIGTERM){
keep_alive = 0;
}else{
}
}
int main(){
do{
signal(SIGINT, sig_handler);
pause(); //thought pausing here would help with waiting for a new signal
}while(keep_alive == 1); //keep looping until false
return 0; //tried with and without
}
I'm trying to figure out a method to keep this process and signal catching loop alive until a specific signal is received. I can't figure it out for the life of me.
ETA 2
Discovered my issue. I wasn't paying attention and fully understanding the signal() method. The first argument requires the exact signal you are attempting to catch. I was using SIGINT which I was understanding it to be a "class" of interrupts that you wanted to catch. And then in the signal_handler() function, you would specify which type of interrupt you were catching. But, it is actually looking to catch the exact signal you are interested in. So in my example code, I should have been using:
int main(){
if(signal(SIGRMIN, sig_handler) == SIG_ERR){
printf("can't catch SIGRMIN Signal.\n")
}
...
}
I'm going to update with my new script as an answer and if anyone thinks it should be done differently or have any constructive criticisms please let me know. Thanks again!

Answer 1

So I found my issue, and it is working now. Below is my fixed code that produces the correct response back to the terminal when caught. I've added a for() loop to catch any other signals I'm not worried about didn't stop my process, only SIGTERM will. Look forward to getting critiqued and why I would never want to do my approach.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
static int file_state; //variable to pass to the driver for recording
void sig_handler(int sig);
void sig_handler(int sig){
if(sig == SIGRTMIN){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN\n");
file_state = 0;
}else if(sig == SIGRTMIN+1){
printf("SIG = SIGRTMIN1\n");
file_state = 1;
}else if(sig == SIGTERM){
exit(0);
EXIT_SUCCESS;
}else{
printf("SIGNAL CAUGHT #%d\n", sig);
}
}
int main(){
if(signal(SIGRTMIN, sig_handler)==SIG_ERR){
printf("Unable to catch SIGRTMIN\n");
}
if(signal(SIGRTMIN+1, sig_handler)==SIG_ERR){
printf("Unable to catch SIGRTMIN+1\n");
}
if(signal(SIGTERM, sig_handler)==SIG_ERR){
printf("Unable to terminate process.\n");
}
//This for loop will catch all other signals except the un-catchable and
//other user-specified above signal #31.
int s;
for(s = 0; s < 32; s++){
signal(s, sig_handler);
}
while(1);
pause();
return 0;
}

Answer 2

There are 2 parts, 1st user space where generation and catching of signals occurs. This has nothing to do with kernel driver. Your code seems okay about it.
2nd is interacting with driver when signal has been caught. For char driver have a look at this link. You can simply write a value write(fd, 1, &buf); from user space program and implement corresponding write() in char driver.