Re: Can EINTR be handled the way BSD handles it? -- a plea from a user-land

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Followup to:  <3A031591.EA24ABFA@moberg.com>
By author:    george@moberg.com
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> 
> Thanks for the info.
> 
> After looking at it, let me modify my position a bit.
> 
> My problem is that pthread_create (glibc 2.1.3, kernel 2.2.17 i686) is
> failing because, deep inside glibc somewhere, nanosleep() is returning
> EINTR.
> 
> My code is not using signals.  The threading library is, and there is
> obviously some subtle bug going on here.  Ever wonder why when browsing
> with Netscape and you click on a link and it says "Interrupted system
> call."?  This is it.  I'm arguing that the default behaviour should be
> SA_RESTART, and if some programmer is so studly that they actually know
> what the hell they are doing by disabling SA_RESTART, then they can do
> it explicitly.
> 

They do so explicitly by not specifying SA_RESTART.  It's a bitmask,
and the behaviour of each bit is specified by POSIX.

> I don't mean this to sound like a rant.

It does... it sounds like a rant someone who hasn't even bothered
looking up the relevant standards and interfaced.

> It's just that I can't possibly ascertain why someone in their right
> mind would want any behaviour different than SA_RESTART.

Synchronous post-processing of signals.   Too many things cannot be
safely done in a signal handler context.

	-hpa
-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt
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