NAME

prctl - operations on a process

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/prctl.h> int prctl(int option, unsigned long arg2, unsigned long arg3 , unsigned long arg4, unsigned long arg5);

DESCRIPTION

prctl is called with a first argument describing what to do (with values defined in <linux/prctl.h>), and further parameters with a significance depending on the first one. The first argument can be:

PR_SET_PDEATHSIG

(since Linux 2.1.57) Set the parent process death signal of the current process to arg2 (either a signal value in the range 1..maxsig, or 0 to clear). This is the signal that the current process will get when its parent dies. This value is cleared upon a fork().

PR_GET_PDEATHSIG

(since Linux 2.3.15) Read the current value of the parent process death signal into the (int *) arg2.

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EINVAL

The value of option is not recognized, or it is PR_SET_PDEATHSIG and arg2 is not zero or a signal number.

CONFORMING TO

This call is Linux-specific. IRIX has a prctl system call (also introduced in Linux 2.1.44 as irix_prctl on the MIPS architecture), with prototype

ptrdiff_t prctl(int option, int arg2, int arg3);

and options to get the maximum number of processes per user, get the maximum number of processors the calling process can use, find out whether a specified process is currently blocked, get or set the maximum stack size, etc., etc.

AVAILABILITY

The prctl() systemcall was introduced in Linux 2.1.57. There is no prctl() library call as yet.

SEE ALSO

signal(2)