WAIT(2) Linux Programmer's Manual WAIT(2)NAME
wait, waitpid - wait for process to change state
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
pid_t wait(int *status);
pid_t waitpid(pid_t pid, int *status, int options);
int waitid(idtype_t idtype, id_t id, siginfo_t *infop, int options);
DESCRIPTION
All of these system calls are used to wait for state changes in a child
of the calling process, and obtain information about the child whose
state has changed. A state change is considered to be: the child ter‐
minated; the child was stopped by a signal; or the child was resumed by
a signal. In the case of a terminated child, performing a wait allows
the system to release the resources associated with the child; if a
wait is not performed, then terminated the child remains in a "zombie"
state (see NOTES below).
If a child has already changed state, then these calls return immedi‐
ately. Otherwise they block until either a child changes state or a
signal handler interrupts the call (assuming that system calls are not
automatically restarted using the SA_RESTART flag of sigaction(2)). In
the remainder of this page, a child whose state has changed and which
has not yet been waited upon by one of these system calls is termed
waitable.
wait() and waitpid()
The wait() system call suspends execution of the current process until
one of its children terminates. The call wait(&status) is equivalent
to:
waitpid(-1, &status, 0);
The waitpid() system call suspends execution of the current process
until a child specified by pid argument has changed state. By default,
waitpid() waits only for terminated children, but this behaviour is
modifiable via the options argument, as described below.
The value of pid can be:
< -1 meaning wait for any child process whose process group ID is
equal to the absolute value of pid.
-1 meaning wait for any child process.
0 meaning wait for any child process whose process group ID is
equal to that of the calling process.
> 0 meaning wait for the child whose process ID is equal to the
value of pid.
The value of options is an OR of zero or more of the following con‐
stants:
WNOHANG
return immediately if no child has exited.
WUNTRACED
also return if a child has stopped (but not traced via
ptrace(2)). Status for traced children which have stopped is
provided even if this option is not specified.
WCONTINUED
(Since Linux 2.6.10) also return if a stopped child has been
resumed by delivery of SIGCONT.
(For Linux-only options, see below.)
The WUNTRACED and WCONTINUED options are only effective if the
SA_NOCLDSTOP flag has not been set for the SIGCHLD signal (see sigac‐
tion(2)).
If status is not NULL, wait() and waitpid() store status information in
the int to which it points. This integer can be inspected with the
following macros (which take the integer itself as an argument, not a
pointer to it, as is done in wait() and waitpid()!):
WIFEXITED(status)
returns true if the child terminated normally, that is, by call‐
ing exit(3) or _exit(2), or by returning from main().
WEXITSTATUS(status)
returns the exit status of the child. This consists of the
least significant 16-8 bits of the status argument that the
child specified in a call to exit() or _exit() or as the argu‐
ment for a return statement in main(). This macro should only
be employed if WIFEXITED returned true.
WIFSIGNALED(status)
returns true if the child process was terminated by a signal.
WTERMSIG(status)
returns the number of the signal that caused the child process
to terminate. This macro should only be employed if WIFSIGNALED
returned true.
WCOREDUMP(status)
returns true if the child produced a core dump. This macro
should only be employed if WIFSIGNALED returned true. This
macro is not specified in POSIX.1-2001 and is not available on
some Unix implementations (e.g., AIX, SunOS). Only use this
enclosed in #ifdef WCOREDUMP ... #endif.
WIFSTOPPED(status)
returns true if the child process was stopped by delivery of a
signal; this is only possible if the call was done using WUN‐
TRACED or when the child is being traced (see ptrace(2)).
WSTOPSIG(status)
returns the number of the signal which caused the child to stop.
This macro should only be employed if WIFSTOPPED returned true.
WIFCONTINUED(status)
(Since Linux 2.6.10) returns true if the child process was
resumed by delivery of SIGCONT.
waitid()
The waitid() system call (available since Linux 2.6.9) provides more
precise control over which child state changes to wait for.
The idtype and id arguments select the child(ren) to wait for, as fol‐
lows:
idtype == P_PID
Wait for the child whose process ID matches id.
idtype == P_PGID
Wait for any child whose process group ID matches id.
idtype == P_ALL
Wait for any child; id is ignored.
The child state changes to wait for are specified by ORing one or more
of the following flags in options:
WEXITED
Wait for children that have terminated.
WSTOPPED
Wait for children that have been stopped by delivery of a sig‐
nal.
WCONTINUED
Wait for (previously stopped) children that have been resumed by
delivery of SIGCONT.
The following flags may additionally be ORed in options:
WNOHANG
As for waitpid().
WNOWAIT
Leave the child in a waitable state; a later wait call can be
used to again retrieve the child status information.
Upon successful return, waitid() fills in the following fields of the
siginfo_t structure pointed to by infop:
si_pid The process ID of the child.
si_uid The real user ID of the child. (This field is not set on most
other implementations.)
si_signo
Always set to SIGCHLD.
si_status
Either the exit status of the child, as given to _exit(2) (or
exit(3)), or the signal that caused the child to terminate,
stop, or continue. The si_code field can be used to determine
how to interpret this field.
si_code
Set to one of: CLD_EXITED (child called _exit(2)); CLD_KILLED
(child killed by signal); CLD_STOPPED (child stopped by signal);
or CLD_CONTINUED (child continued by SIGCONT).
If WNOHANG was specified in options and there were no children in a
waitable state, then waitid() returns 0 immediately and the state of
the siginfo_t structure pointed to by infop is unspecified. To distin‐
guish this case from that where a child was in a waitable state, zero
out the si_pid field before the call and check for a non-zero value in
this field after the call returns.
RETURN VALUEwait(): on success, returns the process ID of the terminated child; on
error, -1 is returned.
waitpid(): on success, returns the process ID of the child whose state
has changed; on error, -1 is returned; if WNOHANG was specified and no
child(ren) specified by pid has yet changed state, then 0 is returned.
waitid(): returns 0 on success or if WNOHANG was specified and no
child(ren) specified by id has yet changed state; on error, -1 is
returned.
Each of these calls sets errno to an appropriate value in the case of
an error.
ERRORS
ECHILD (for wait()) The calling process does not have any unwaited-for
children.
ECHILD (for waitpid() or waitid()) The process specified by pid (wait‐
pid()) or idtype and id (waitid()) does not exist or is not a
child of the calling process. (This can happen for one's own
child if the action for SIGCHLD is set to SIG_IGN. See also the
LINUX NOTES section about threads.)
EINTR WNOHANG was not set and an unblocked signal or a SIGCHLD was
caught.
EINVAL The options argument was invalid.
NOTES
A child that terminates, but has not been waited for becomes a "zom‐
bie". The kernel maintains a minimal set of information about the zom‐
bie process (PID, termination status, resource usage information) in
order to allow the parent to later perform a wait to obtain information
about the child. As long as a zombie is not removed from the system
via a wait, it will consume a slot in the kernel process table, and if
this table fills, it will not be possible to create further processes.
If a parent process terminates, then its "zombie" children (if any) are
adopted by init(8), which automatically performs a wait to remove the
zombies.
POSIX.1-2001 specifies that if the disposition of SIGCHLD is set to
SIG_IGN or the SA_NOCLDWAIT flag is set for SIGCHLD (see sigaction(2)),
then children that terminate do not become zombies and a call to wait()
or waitpid() will block until all children have terminated, and then
fail with errno set to ECHILD. (The original POSIX standard left the
behaviour of setting SIGCHLD to SIG_IGN unspecified.) Linux 2.6 con‐
forms to this specification. However, Linux 2.4 (and earlier) does
not: if a wait() or waitpid() call is made while SIGCHLD is being
ignored, the call behaves just as though SIGCHLD were not being
ignored, that is, the call blocks until the next child terminates and
then returns the process ID and status of that child.
LINUX NOTES
In the Linux kernel, a kernel-scheduled thread is not a distinct con‐
struct from a process. Instead, a thread is simply a process that is
created using the Linux-unique clone(2) system call; other routines
such as the portable pthread_create(3) call are implemented using
clone(2). Before Linux 2.4, a thread was just a special case of a
process, and as a consequence one thread could not wait on the children
of another thread, even when the latter belongs to the same thread
group. However, POSIX prescribes such functionality, and since Linux
2.4 a thread can, and by default will, wait on children of other
threads in the same thread group.
The following Linux-specific options are for use with children created
using clone(2); they cannot be used with waitid():
__WCLONE
Wait for "clone" children only. If omitted then wait for "non-
clone" children only. (A "clone" child is one which delivers no
signal, or a signal other than SIGCHLD to its parent upon termi‐
nation.) This option is ignored if __WALL is also specified.
__WALL (Since Linux 2.4) Wait for all children, regardless of type
("clone" or "non-clone").
__WNOTHREAD
(Since Linux 2.4) Do not wait for children of other threads in
the same thread group. This was the default before Linux 2.4.
EXAMPLE
The following program demonstrates the use of fork(2) and waitpid(2).
The program creates a child process. If no command-line argument is
supplied to the program, then the child suspends its execution using
pause(2), to allow the user to send signals to the child. Otherwise,
if a command-line argument is supplied, then the child exits immedi‐
ately, using the integer supplied on the command line as the exit sta‐
tus. The parent process executes a loop that monitors the child using
waitpid(2), and uses the W*() macros described above to analyse the
wait status value.
The following shell session demonstrates the use of the program:
$ ./a.out &
Child PID is 32360
[1] 32359
$ kill -STOP 32360
stopped by signal 19
$ kill -CONT 32360
continued
$ kill -TERM 32360
killed by signal 15
[1]+ Done ./a.out
$
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
pid_t cpid, w;
int status;
cpid = fork();
if (cpid == -1) { perror("fork"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); }
if (cpid == 0) { /* Code executed by child */
printf("Child PID is %ld\n", (long) getpid());
if (argc == 1)
pause(); /* Wait for signals */
_exit(atoi(argv[1]));
} else { /* Code executed by parent */
do {
w = waitpid(cpid, &status, WUNTRACED | WCONTINUED);
if (w == -1) { perror("waitpid"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); }
if (WIFEXITED(status)) {
printf("exited, status=%d\n", WEXITSTATUS(status));
} else if (WIFSIGNALED(status)) {
printf("killed by signal %d\n", WTERMSIG(status));
} else if (WIFSTOPPED(status)) {
printf("stopped by signal %d\n", WSTOPSIG(status));
} else if (WIFCONTINUED(status)) {
printf("continued\n");
}
} while (!WIFEXITED(status) && !WIFSIGNALED(status));
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
}
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
SEE ALSO_exit(2), clone(2), fork(2), kill(2), ptrace(2), sigaction(2), sig‐
nal(2), wait4(2), pthread_create(3), signal(7)Linux 2004-11-11 WAIT(2)
