I'm in the process of writing a program that is a server- it will accept connections and stuff, and spawn a child process for each. However, i've run into a small problem.
I really do NOT want to bother with keeping track of the processes unless i need to. So, i set SA_NOCLDWAIT (#ifdef) on a SIG_IGN to the SIGCHLD handler through sigaction interface. The standard says that it the kernel will then keep track of reaping zombie processes for me (a HUGE plus). However, upon receiving a SIGINT signal, i want to stop the server from accepting new connections (done), and then wait for there to be no new connections. I was thinking of just putting a loop like so:
Code:
while((wait(NULL) != (pid_t)-1) && errno != ECHILD);
However, I'm not *sure* that this will work, especially with SIGCHLD still ignored. So how can i tell if there are still child processes? I can't find any call like int getnumchld(pid_t proc); (i wish)... Plus it would be inefficient to spin on that function anyway. OTOH, i would rather *NOT* have to do the same thing in a loop with a system("ps |...>file"); read(file); etc. either. Is there a way i can portably implement this feature (I was hoping i could run it on linux and the major BSDs, at least).
TO SUM IT UP:
How can i tell if a process has no child processes if i've SIG_IGN'd SA_NOCLDWAIT'd the SIGCHLD? Is there a _reasonably_ portable way to do so?
I really *don't* want to manually wait for EVERY process. Maybe only those still active at the time of SIGTERM, but that requires keeping track of the number of connections and whether those have terminated... ugh.
EDIT: Does anyone know if the above code *would* work, even with SIGCHLD ignored and the kernel cleaning up zombies *for* me? I checked the manpage and it doesn't say much.
EDIT1: Note that all of the processes are in the same process group and session. SO i can find them through this as well. Perhaps even setting the uid/gid and finding all processes run by that group?
EDIT2: Ok, i have an idea if the above isn't feasible. If there is no "elegant" way to do it, i could reduce the complexity by sending a SIGUSR1 to the whole process group. Each process would then set a flag telling it to send a SIGUSR1 in reply and send a SIGUSR2 when it is done executing. Then i could keep a count of signals. Maybe that would be *easier*. Or perhaps a count of all child processes and just a termination signal to decrement the counter. This would be kludgey, but would most likely work. So is there another option?
