Block SIGCHILD in program with multiple custom signal handlers - c

Question

I have a program that needs to use one custom signal handler for SIGINT and one for SIGCHILD.
I therefore added two struct sigaction called sigchildStruct and sigintStruct, and used sigaction to define two custo signal handling functions: handleSigInt() and handleSigChild()
First of all, is this the way you are supposed to do it; needing to register two separate sigaction structs?
Second of all, i need to block SIGCHILD during part of the code execution, i only want to receive the signal at one place in the code, so i used:
sigdelset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD);
// Catch SIGCHILD signal here
sigaddset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD);
Is that how you would do that? More importantly: there are two sigaction structs, but do i only need to change the sa_mask on one of them, or on both? Now i only changed the sa_mask on the struct called sigchildStruct, and not on the one called sigintStruct.
The rest of the code:
void handleSigchild(int sig) {
int childPID,childExitStatus;
printf("\nSIGCHILD received\n");
while ((childPID = waitpid(-1,&childExitStatus,WNOHANG)) >0) {
if (childExitStatus==2) {printf("Background process: %d%s",childPID," terminated by SIGINT\n");}
else if (childExitStatus!=0) {printf("Background process: %d%s",childPID," unknown command\n");}
printf("Background process: %d%s\n",childPID," has exited");
}
}
void handleSigInt(int sig) {
// SIGINT will be sent to all child processes so nothing needs to be done
printf("\nSIGINT received\n");
}
int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
// Sigaction for SIGCHILD
struct sigaction sigchildStruct;
sigchildStruct.sa_handler = &handleSigchild;
sigemptyset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask);
sigaddset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD);
sigchildStruct.sa_flags = SA_NOCLDSTOP;
if (sigaction(SIGCHLD, &sigchildStruct, 0) == -1) {
printf("Couldnt register signal handler: %s\n",strerror(errno));
exit(1);
}
// Sigaction for SIGINT
struct sigaction sigintStruct;
sigintStruct.sa_handler = &handleSigInt;
sigemptyset(&sigintStruct.sa_mask);
sigintStruct.sa_flags = SA_RESTART;
if (sigaction(SIGINT, &sigintStruct, 0) == -1) {
printf("Couldnt register signal handler: %s\n",strerror(errno));
exit(1);
}
sigdelset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD);
// Catch SIGCHILD signal here
sigaddset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD);
}

Answer 1

Because nobody answered, I'll try to do so. When I am dealing with signals I am using the function signal. This function takes two parameters: signal code and signal handler function. To start catching the signals I would put the code:
signal(SIGINT, handleSigInt);
signal(SIGCHILD, handleSigChild);
To stop catching the signal, I would execute:
signal(SIGINT, SIG_IGN);
signal(SIGCHILD, SIG_IGN);
Hope it helps.

Answer 2

There is several mistakes in your code.
1) It is not necessary to add SIGCHLD signal in the set of blocked signals during its handling. Every catched signal is blocked during its handling, so that there is no concurrent reentrance in the handling function :
struct sigaction sigchildStruct;
sigchildStruct.sa_handler = &handleSigchild;
sigemptyset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask);
// sigaddset(&sigchildStruct.sa_mask,SIGCHLD); // unnecessary
sigchildStruct.sa_flags = SA_NOCLDSTOP;
2) You modified the sa_mask value of the struct after setting the action, which has no effect. If you want to block the delivery of signals for some time you need to modify the process signal mask. There is a function to do that : sigprocmask. So you can do something like :
sigset_t oldMask, newMask;
sigemptyset(&newMask);
sigaddset(&newMask,SIGCHLD);
sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK,&newMask,&oldMask);
// now protected from SIGCHLD delivery, signal will be blocked...
sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK,&oldMask,NULL);
// old protection reinstalled...