Re: manipulating sigmask from filesystems and drivers

Roman Zippel
2002-08-01T20:44:24Z

Hi,

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> Easy reason: there are tons of code sequences that _cannot_ take signals.
> The only way to make a signal go away is to actually deliver it, and there
> are documented interfaces that are guaranteed to complete without
> delivering a signal. The trivial case is a disk read: real applications
> break if you return partial results in order to handle signals in the
> middle.
>
> In short, this is not something that can be discussed. It's a cold fact, a
> law of UNIX if you will.

Any program setting up signal handlers should expext interrupted i/o,
otherwise it's buggy. If a program doesn't have any signal handlers, there
is no signal to deliver, so simple programs don't need to worry.

bye, Roman