How to handle EINTR (interrupted System Call)

Question

Hi,

My user-space application sometimes blocks after receiving an EINTR-Signal, somehow.

What I recorded with strace:

time(NULL)                              = 1257343042
time(NULL)                              = 1257343042
rt_sigreturn(0xbff07be4)                = -1 EINTR (Interrupted system call)
--- SIGALRM (Alarm clock) @ 0 (0) ---
time(NULL)                              = 1257343042
futex(0xb7cea80c, 0x80 /* FUTEX_??? */, 2) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGUSR1 (User defined signal 1) @ 0 (0) ---
sigreturn()                             = ? (mask now [ALRM])
futex(0xb7cea80c, 0x80 /* FUTEX_??? */, 2) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGWINCH (Window changed) @ 0 (0) ---
futex(0xb7cea80c, 0x80 /* FUTEX_??? */, 2) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGTERM (Terminated) @ 0 (0) ---
time(NULL)                              = 1257343443
time(NULL)                              = 1257343443
futex(0xb7cea80c, 0x80 /* FUTEX_??? */, 2) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGWINCH (Window changed) @ 0 (0) ---
futex(0xb7cea80c, 0x80 /* FUTEX_??? */, 2

Can I catch the EINTR signal and how can I repeat concerned calls such as write, read or select? How can I determine WHERE this EINTR occurred, even if I used third-party libraries working with system calls?

Why my app is completely blocked after receiving an EINTR (see strace dump: I sent a SIGUSR1 which normally should be handled)? And why is futex() returning ERESTARTSYS to user space?

thanks

Answer 1

The code which calls write (or other blocking operations) has to be aware of EINTR. If a signal occurs during a blocking operation, then the operation will either (a) return partial completion, or (b) return failure, do nothing, and set errno to EINTR.

So, for an all-or-fail write operation which retries after interruptions, you'd do something like this:

while(size > 0) {
    int written = write(filedes, buf, size);
    if (written == -1) {
        if (errno == EINTR) continue;
        return -1;
    }
    buf += written;
    size -= written;
}
return 0; // success

Or for something a bit better behaved, which retries EINTR, writes as much as it can, and reports how much is written on failure (so the caller can decide whether and how to continue partial writes which fail for a reason other than interruption by signal):

int total = 0;
while(size > 0) {
    int written = write(filedes, buf, size);
    if (written == -1) {
        if (errno == EINTR) continue;
        return (total == 0) ? -1 : total;
    }
    buf += written;
    total += written;
    size -= written;
}
return total; // bytes written

GNU has a non-standard TEMP_FAILURE_RETRY macro that might be of interest, although I can never find the docs for it when I want them. Including now.

Answer 2

See also the discussion of "loser mode" in Worse is Better