How to pass signals to child process - c

Title may be a little confusing, so let me explain. I am trying to write a simple shell to practice my programming. I have got the get a command, fork, exec loop working. However, when I press CTRL-C while child process is still executing, my shell terminates, instead of child process (but child process would keep running). Here is the main function:
int main()
{
dynarray *args; /* pointer to a dynamic array */
int bytes_read;
size_t nbytes = 0;
char *command;
pid_t pid;
printf("Enter command: ");
while ((bytes_read = getline(&command, &nbytes, stdin)) != -1) {
if (bytes_read == -1) {
perror("getline");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
pid = fork();
if (pid == -1) {
perror("fork");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else if (pid == 0) { /* child process */
args = newdynarray();
char *arg = strtok(command, " \n");
while (arg != NULL) {
addstring(args, arg);
arg = strtok(NULL, " \n");
}
if (args->nval == 0) {
freedynarray(args);
continue;
}
addstring(args, NULL);
char *fullpath = find_executable(args->strings[0]);
if (fullpath == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "Couldn't find executable: %s\n", command);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (execv(fullpath, args->strings) == -1) {
perror("execv");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
} else {
int status;
waitpid(pid, &status, 0);
}
printf("Enter command: ");
}
return 0;
}
I didn't include other parts, because I don't think they are relevant. How can I make my child process catch all the input from stdin until it terminates?

You can register a signal handler for SIGINT in your parent process, and therein use kill(2) to send a signal to the child process, whose PID you should store somewhere.

How can I make my child process catch all the input from stdin until it terminates? Signals generated from stdin keys (such as control C) will be sent to the last process to use stdin, so there's nothing you can do unless you can force your child to use the path.
Instead, you need to create a signal handler in your shell process to catch SIGINT (and others), and resend the signal (using the kill() function) to the process you want to receive it.

Related

How to signal from parent process to the child?

How can i send signal from parent process to the child?
After i write to the pipe i want to send signal to the child process.
pid_t pid;
int filds[2];
pipe(filds);
char *args[150] = {"./draw.out", NULL};
char buff = '\0';
if ((pid = fork()) < 0) { // fork a child process/
printf("*** ERROR: forking child process failed\n");
exit(1);
} else if (pid == 0) {
execvp(args[0], args); // execute the command
} else { // for the parent
char btnPressed = getch();
while (btnPressed != 'q'){
btnPressed = getch();
write(filds[1],buff, BUFF_SIZE);
//signal
}
// signal finish game.
}
kill(PID, SIGwhatever);
however this is probably a poor choice; the better solution is
close(filds[1]);
and handle close of input in the child. I think you're missing a
dup2(files[0],0);
in the child path as well.

Does anyone see any mistakes here? I am trying to get a message via a pipe, from my parent to child

The problem here is that the child process does not wait for the message to arrive from the function startWorking(), and because of that I am getting a random char as output or sometimes nothing.
I am sending a char array from startWorking() to the pipe and I am making sure only the parent does this job.
One solution would be, sending a signal from startWorking() to the child processor, after writing into the pipe.
But the read() function behavior is waiting for the pipe to receive the message and only then read the message, but somehow it's not doing that, or maybe there is a problem in writing the message.
int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
pid_t pid;
pid = fork();
int mypipefd[2];
if (pid > 0)
{
if (pipe(mypipefd) == -1)
{
perror("Pipe failed\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
storeEngine(mypipefd);
}
else if(pid < 0)
{
perror("fork call failed \n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else
{
printf("I am the child \n");
printf("child: %d \n", getpid());
char message[6];
close(mypipefd[1]);
read(mypipefd[0], &message, 6);
close(mypipefd[0]);
printf("child read value:\n ");
printf("%s \n", message);
}
return 0;
}
void startWorking(int *mypipefd)
{
printf("%d \n" ,getpid());
//close(*mypipefd);
write(*(mypipefd+1), "hello", 6);
close(*(mypipefd+1));
}
Notice that if I remove the two slash behind close(*mypipefd) the program will never finish, and it will get stuck there.
Without examining the rest of your code, you need to call pipe() before you call fork() so the pipe can be used by both the parent and the child process. If you call pipe() after you call fork(), the pipe is only usable by that one process.
More like this:
int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
int mypipefd[2];
if ( pipe( mypipefd ) == -1 )
{
perror("Pipe failed\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid > 0)
{
storeEngine(mypipefd);
}
.
.
.
No, pipes used to communicate between processes should be created before the fork() (otherwise, you have no easy way to send thru them, since the reading and the writing ends should be used by different processes).

Can't kill PID started with spawn

Some days ago, I asked here how to start a program using C without using fork(). This solution is working fine.....except that I can't kill this child process!
My program (in this case, 'rbfeeder') has some threads....and when I send kill signal, only threads are killed (I think). What am I doing wrong?
This is the code used to 'start' rbfeeder:
/*
* Start dump1090, if not running
*/
void startDump(void) {
if (p_dump != 0) {
log_level(8, "Looks like dump is already running.\n");
return;
}
pid_t ret = run_cmd("/home/jmaurin/dev/client/rbfeeder");
if (ret != 0) {
log_level(8, "Ok, started! Pid is: %i\n", ret);
p_dump = ret;
sendStats();
} else {
log_level(8, "Error starting dump1090\n");
p_dump = 0;
sendStats();
}
return;
}
And this is the code to 'stop':
void stopDump(void) {
if (checkDumpRunning()) {
log_level(3, "Dump is running, let's try to kill.\n");
if (kill(p_dump, SIGKILL) == 0) {
log_level(3,"Succesfull kill dump!\n");
sendStats();
return;
} else {
log_level(3,"Error killing dump.\n");
return;
}
} else {
log_level(3, "Dump is not running.\n");
}
return;
}
and run_cmd function:
pid_t run_cmd(char *cmd) {
pid_t pid, ret;
char *argv[] = {"sh", "-c", cmd, NULL};
int status, s;
posix_spawn_file_actions_t file_actions;
posix_spawn_file_actions_t *file_actionsp;
s = posix_spawn_file_actions_init(&file_actions);
if (s != 0)
return 0;
//STDERR_FILENO
s = posix_spawn_file_actions_addclose(&file_actions,STDERR_FILENO);
if (s != 0)
return 0;
file_actionsp = &file_actions;
//printf("Run command: %s\n", cmd);
status = posix_spawn(&pid, "/bin/sh", file_actionsp, NULL, argv, environ);
if (status == 0) {
log_level(8, "Child pid: %i\n", pid);
ret = pid;
/*
if (waitpid(pid, &status, 0) != -1) {
printf("Child exited with status %i\n", status);
} else {
perror("waitpid");
}
*/
} else {
// printf("posix_spawn: %s\n", strerror(status));
ret = 0;
}
return ret;
//printf("End of run\n");
}
p_dump is a global variable to hold PID.
This image is when my 'client' receive the command (over ethernet) to start external program:
Then, an HTOP on the same machine....see that PID are the same, which means that my variable is correct:
Then, I've sent an 'stop' command and my client executed 'stopDump', but one process still running (the other threads from same program are 'killed'):
The external program doesn't 'spawn/fork' itself, but it does have threads.
Your kill is completing successfully, because the process is becoming a zombie, (The Z in the status column in HTOP). A zombie is a process that still has metadata in the kernel, but is not actually running. To get rid of the zombie, the parent has to wait on the process. As your process is the parent, adding a call to waitpid(p_dump) after the kill succeeds should handle this.
The answer by user1937198 worked fine, but I found another way that doesn't need to call any function, like 'waitpid'.
struct sigaction sigchld_action = {
.sa_handler = SIG_DFL,
.sa_flags = SA_NOCLDWAIT
};
sigaction(SIGCHLD, &sigchld_action, NULL);
At least in my case, it's preventing zombie proccess after kill. It's works fine.

Creating a UNIX Shell, confused about fork and child pids?

Here is my code for the evaluate function, which is called in the main.
void eval(char *cmdline)
{
char *argv[MAXARGS]; /* argv for execve() */
int bg; /* should the job run in bg or fg? */
pid_t pid; /* process id */
bg = parseline(cmdline, argv);
struct job_t tempJob;
if (builtin_cmd(argv) == 0)
{
if ((pid = fork()) == 0)
{ /* child runs user job */
if (execve(argv[0], argv, environ) < 0)
{
printf("%s: Command not found.\n", argv[0]);
exit(0);
}
}
if (!bg)
{ /* parent waits for fg job to terminate */
int status;
if (waitpid(pid, &status, 0) < 0)
unix_error("waitfg: waitpid error");
}
else /* otherwise, don’t wait for bg job */
{
printf("%d %s", pid, cmdline);
}
}
return;
}
Now when I run a background job, I expect that the pid of the job get printed twice twice, once in parent and once for child.I just need to understand what is going on in the code. It works the way it is supposed to but why?
Both the parent and child return from fork, but the condition == 0 is true only for the child:
if ((pid = fork()) == 0)
Thus only the child runs this:
if (execve(argv[0], argv, environ) < 0)
execve replaces the current process, and thus does not return if there is no error, i.e., the child's execution of this program ends either here or at the exit(0); that follows from the error condition.
The rest of the function is run only by the parent in all cases.

Implementing pipelining in a Linux shell

I'm trying to develop a shell in Linux as an Operating Systems project. One of the requirements is to support pipelining (where calling something like ls -l|less passes the output of the first command to the second). I'm trying to use the C pipe() and dup2() commands but the redirection doesn't seem to be happening (less complains that it didn't receive a filename). Can you identify where I'm going wrong/how I might go about fixing that?
EDIT: I'm thinking that I need to use either freopen or fdopen somewhere since I'm not using read() or write()... is that correct?
(I've heard from others who've done this project that using freopen() is another way to solve this problem; if you think that would be better, tips for going that direction would also be appreciated.)
Here's my execute_external() function, which executes all commands not built-in to the shell. The various commands in the pipe (e.g. [ls -l] and [less]) are stored in the commands[] array.
void execute_external()
{
int numCommands = 1;
char **commands;
commands = malloc(sizeof(char *));
if(strstr(raw_command, "|") != NULL)
{
numCommands = separate_pipeline_commands(commands);
}
else
{
commands[0] = malloc(strlen(raw_command) * sizeof(char));
commands[0] = raw_command;
}
int i;
int pipefd[2];
for (i = 0; i < numCommands; i++)
{
char **parameters_array = malloc(strlen(commands[i]) * sizeof(char *));
int num_params;
num_params = str_to_str_array(commands[i], parameters_array);
if (numCommands > 1 && i > 0 && i != numCommands - 1)
{
if (pipe(pipefd) == -1)
{
printf("Could not open a pipe.");
}
}
pid_t pid = fork();
pmesg(2, "Process forked. ID = %i. \n", pid);
int status;
if (fork < 0)
{
fprintf(to_write_to, "Could not fork a process to complete the external command.\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (pid == 0) // This is the child process
{
if (numCommands > 1) { close(pipefd[1]); } // close the unused write end of the pipe
if (i == 0) // we may be pipelining and this is the first process
{
dup2(1, pipefd[1]); // set the source descriptor (for the next iteration of the loop) to this proc's stdout
}
if (i !=0 && (i != numCommands-1)) // we are pipelining and this is not the first or last process
{
dup2(pipefd[0], 0); // set the stdin of this process to the source of the previous process
}
if (execvp(parameters_array[0], parameters_array) < 0)
{
fprintf(to_write_to, "Could not execute the external command. errno: %i.\n", errno);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else { pmesg(2, "Executed the child process.\n");}
}
else
{
if (numCommands > 1) { close(pipefd[0]); } // close the unused read end of the pipe
if (backgrounding == 0) { while(wait(&status) != pid); }// Wait for the child to finish executing
}
free(parameters_array);
}
free(commands);
}
It looks like there are a couple of bugs going on in your code.
First, all your dup2's are only in the child. In order to connect a pipe you will need to dup2 the stdout of the parent to the write end pipefd[1] of the pipe. Then you would hook up the read end to stdin.
Also it looks like on of your dup2's is backwards with dup2 fildes is duplicated to fildes2. So when you reassign stdin you want dup2(in, 0) and for stdout you want dup2(out, 1).
So a stripped down piece of piping code is going to look like:
int pipefd[2];
pipe(pipefd);
pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid == 0) //The child
{
dup2(pipefd[0], 0);
}
else
{
dup2(pipefd[1], 1);
}

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