signal-safety(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual signal-safety(7) NAME signal-safety - async-signal-safe functions DESCRIPTION An async-signal-safe function is one that can be safely called from within a signal handler. Many functions are not async-signal-safe. In particular, nonreentrant functions are generally unsafe to call from a signal handler. The kinds of issues that render a function unsafe can be quickly understood when one considers the implementation of the stdio library, all of whose functions are not async-signal-safe. When performing buffered I/O on a file, the stdio functions must maintain a statically allocated data buffer along with associated counters and indexes (or pointers) that record the amount of data and the current position in the buffer. Suppose that the main program is in the middle of a call to a stdio function such as printf(3) where the buffer and associated variables have been partially updated. If, at that moment, the program is interrupted by a signal handler that also calls printf(3), then the second call to printf(3) will operate on inconsistent data, with unpredictable results. To avoid problems with unsafe functions, there are two possible choices: (a) Ensure that (1) the signal handler calls only async-signal-safe functions, and (2) the signal handler itself is reentrant with respect to global variables in the main program. (b) Block signal delivery in the main program when calling functions that are unsafe or operating on global data that is also accessed by the signal handler. Generally, the second choice is difficult in programs of any complexity, so the first choice is taken. POSIX.1 specifies a set of functions that an implementation must make async-signal-safe. (An implementation may provide safe implementations of additional functions, but this is not required by the standard and other implementations may not provide the same guarantees.) In general, a function is async-signal-safe either because it is reentrant or because it is atomic with respect to signals (i.e., its execution can't be interrupted by a signal handler). The set of functions required to be async-signal-safe by POSIX.1 is shown in the following table. The functions not otherwise noted were required to be async-signal-safe in POSIX.1-2001; the table details changes in the subsequent standards. Function Notes abort(3) Added in POSIX.1-2001 TC1 accept(2) access(2) aio_error(3) aio_return(3) aio_suspend(3) See notes below alarm(2) bind(2) cfgetispeed(3) cfgetospeed(3) cfsetispeed(3) cfsetospeed(3) chdir(2) chmod(2) chown(2) clock_gettime(2) close(2) connect(2) creat(2) dup(2) dup2(2) execl(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008; see notes below execle(3) See notes below execv(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 execve(2) _exit(2) _Exit(2) faccessat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 fchdir(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC1 fchmod(2) fchmodat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 fchown(2) fchownat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 fcntl(2) fdatasync(2) fexecve(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 ffs(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 fork(2) See notes below fstat(2) fstatat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 fsync(2) ftruncate(2) futimens(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 getegid(2) geteuid(2) getgid(2) getgroups(2) getpeername(2) getpgrp(2) getpid(2) getppid(2) getsockname(2) getsockopt(2) getuid(2) htonl(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 htons(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 kill(2) link(2) linkat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 listen(2) longjmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2; see notes below lseek(2) lstat(2) memccpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 memchr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 memcmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 memcpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 memmove(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 memset(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 mkdir(2) mkdirat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 mkfifo(3) mkfifoat(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 mknod(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 mknodat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 ntohl(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 ntohs(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 open(2) openat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 pause(2) pipe(2) poll(2) posix_trace_event(3) pselect(2) pthread_kill(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC1 pthread_self(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC1 pthread_sigmask(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC1 raise(3) read(2) readlink(2) readlinkat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 recv(2) recvfrom(2) recvmsg(2) rename(2) renameat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 rmdir(2) select(2) sem_post(3) send(2) sendmsg(2) sendto(2) setgid(2) setpgid(2) setsid(2) setsockopt(2) setuid(2) shutdown(2) sigaction(2) sigaddset(3) sigdelset(3) sigemptyset(3) sigfillset(3) sigismember(3) siglongjmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2; see notes below signal(2) sigpause(3) sigpending(2) sigprocmask(2) sigqueue(2) sigset(3) sigsuspend(2) sleep(3) sockatmark(3) Added in POSIX.1-2001 TC2 socket(2) socketpair(2) stat(2) stpcpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 stpncpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strcat(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strchr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strcmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strcpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strcspn(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strlen(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strncat(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strncmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strncpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strnlen(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strpbrk(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strrchr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strspn(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strstr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 strtok_r(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 symlink(2) symlinkat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 tcdrain(3) tcflow(3) tcflush(3) tcgetattr(3) tcgetpgrp(3) tcsendbreak(3) tcsetattr(3) tcsetpgrp(3) time(2) timer_getoverrun(2) timer_gettime(2) timer_settime(2) times(2) umask(2) uname(2) unlink(2) unlinkat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 utime(2) utimensat(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 utimes(2) Added in POSIX.1-2008 wait(2) waitpid(2) wcpcpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcpncpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcscat(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcschr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcscmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcscpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcscspn(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcslen(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsncat(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsncmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsncpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsnlen(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcspbrk(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsrchr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsspn(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcsstr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wcstok(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wmemchr(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wmemcmp(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wmemcpy(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wmemmove(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 wmemset(3) Added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2 write(2) Notes: o POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2001 TC2 required the functions fpathconf(3), pathconf(3), and sysconf(3) to be async-signal-safe, but this requirement was removed in POSIX.1-2008. o If a signal handler interrupts the execution of an unsafe function, and the handler terminates via a call to longjmp(3) or siglongjmp(3) and the program subsequently calls an unsafe function, then the behavior of the program is undefined. o POSIX.1-2001 TC1 clarified that if an application calls fork(2) from a signal handler and any of the fork handlers registered by pthread_atfork(3) calls a function that is not async-signal-safe, the behavior is undefined. A future revision of the standard is likely to remove fork(2) from the list of async-signal-safe functions. o Asynchronous signal handlers that call functions which are cancelation points and nest over regions of deferred cancelation may trigger cancelation whose behavior is as if asynchronous cancelation had occurred and may cause application state to become inconsistent. errno Fetching and setting the value of errno is async-signal-safe provided that the signal handler saves errno on entry and restores its value before returning. Deviations in the GNU C library The following known deviations from the standard occur in the GNU C library: o Before glibc 2.24, execl(3) and execle(3) employed realloc(3) internally and were consequently not async-signal-safe. This was fixed in glibc 2.24. o The glibc implementation of aio_suspend(3) is not async-signal-safe because it uses pthread_mutex_lock(3) internally. SEE ALSO sigaction(2), signal(7), standards(7) Linux man-pages 6.7 2023-10-31 signal-safety(7)