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PROCCTL(2) System Calls Manual PROCCTL(2)

NAME

procctl —
control processes

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/procctl.h>

int
procctl(idtype_t idtype, id_t id, int cmd, void *arg);

DESCRIPTION

The procctl() system call provides for control over processes. The idtype and id arguments specify the set of processes to control. If multiple processes match the identifier, procctl will make a “best effort” to control as many of the selected processes as possible. An error is only returned if no selected processes successfully complete the request. The following identifier types are supported:
Control the process with the process ID id.
Control processes belonging to the process group with the ID id.

The control request to perform is specified by the cmd argument. The following commands are supported:

Set process protection state. This is used to mark a process as protected from being killed if the system exhausts the available memory and swap. The arg parameter must point to an integer containing an operation and zero or more optional flags. The following operations are supported:
Mark the selected processes as protected.
Clear the protected state of selected processes.

The following optional flags are supported:

Apply the requested operation to all child processes of each selected process in addition to each selected process.
When used with PPROT_SET, mark all future child processes of each selected process as protected. Future child processes will also mark all of their future child processes.
Acquires the reaper status for the current process. Reaper status means that children orphaned by the reaper's descendants that were forked after the acquisition of reaper status are reparented to the reaper process. After system initialization, init(8) is the default reaper.
Release the reaper state for the current process. The reaper of the current process becomes the new reaper of the current process's descendants.
Provides information about the reaper of the specified process, or the process itself when it is a reaper. The data argument must point to a procctl_reaper_status structure which is filled in by the syscall on successful return. 
struct procctl_reaper_status {
	u_int	rs_flags;
	u_int	rs_children;
	u_int	rs_descendants;
	pid_t	rs_reaper;
	pid_t	rs_pid;
};
The rs_flags may have the following flags returned:
The specified process has acquired reaper status and has not released it. When the flag is returned, the specified process id, pid, identifies the reaper, otherwise the rs_reaper field of the structure is set to the pid of the reaper for the specified process id.
The specified process is the root of the reaper tree, i.e., init(8).

The rs_children field returns the number of children of the reaper among the descendants. It is possible to have a child whose reaper is not the specified process, since the reaper for any existing children is not reset on the PROC_REAP_ACQUIRE operation. The rs_descendants field returns the total number of descendants of the reaper(s), not counting descendants of the reaper in the subtree. The rs_reaper field returns the reaper pid. The rs_pid returns the pid of one reaper child if there are any descendants.

Queries the list of descendants of the reaper of the specified process. The request takes a pointer to a procctl_reaper_pids structure in the data parameter. 
struct procctl_reaper_pids {
	u_int	rp_count;
	struct procctl_reaper_pidinfo *rp_pids;
};
When called, the rp_pids field must point to an array of procctl_reaper_pidinfo structures, to be filled in on return, and the rp_count field must specify the size of the array, into which no more than rp_count elements will be filled in by the kernel.

The struct procctl_reaper_pidinfo structure provides some information about one of the reaper's descendants. Note that for a descendant that is not a child, it may be incorrectly identified because of a race in which the original child process exited and the exited process's pid was reused for an unrelated process.

struct procctl_reaper_pidinfo {
	pid_t	pi_pid;
	pid_t	pi_subtree;
	u_int	pi_flags;
};
The pi_pid field is the process id of the descendant. The pi_subtree field provides the pid of the child of the reaper, which is the (grand-)parent of the process. The pi_flags field returns the following flags, further describing the descendant:
Set to indicate that the procctl_reaper_pidinfo structure was filled in by the kernel. Zero-filling the rp_pids array and testing the REAPER_PIDINFO_VALID flag allows the caller to detect the end of the returned array.
The pi_pid field identifies the direct child of the reaper.
Request to deliver a signal to some subset of the descendants of the reaper. The data parameter must point to a procctl_reaper_kill structure, which is used both for parameters and status return. 
struct procctl_reaper_kill {
	int	rk_sig;
	u_int	rk_flags;
	pid_t	rk_subtree;
	u_int	rk_killed;
	pid_t	rk_fpid;
};
The rk_sig field specifies the signal to be delivered. Zero is not a valid signal number, unlike for kill(2). The rk_flags field further directs the operation. It is or-ed from the following flags:
Deliver the specified signal only to direct children of the reaper.
Deliver the specified signal only to descendants that were forked by the direct child with pid specified in the rk_subtree field.
If neither the REAPER_KILL_CHILDREN nor the REAPER_KILL_SUBTREE flags are specified, all current descendants of the reaper are signalled.

If a signal was delivered to any process, the return value from the request is zero. In this case, the rk_killed field identifies the number of processes signalled. The rk_fpid field is set to the pid of the first process for which signal delivery failed, e.g., due to permission problems. If no such process exists, the rk_fpid field is set to -1.

Enable or disable tracing of the specified process(es), according to the value of the integer argument. Tracing includes attachment to the process using the ptrace(2) and ktrace(2), debugging sysctls, hwpmc(4), dtrace(1), and core dumping. Possible values for the data argument are:
Enable tracing, after it was disabled by PROC_TRACE_CTL_DISABLE. Only allowed for self.
Disable tracing for the specified process. Tracing is re-enabled when the process changes the executing program with the execve(2) syscall. A child inherits the trace settings from the parent on fork(2).
Same as PROC_TRACE_CTL_DISABLE, but the setting persists for the process even after execve(2).
Returns the current tracing status for the specified process in the integer variable pointed to by data. If tracing is disabled, data is set to -1. If tracing is enabled, but no debugger is attached by the ptrace(2) syscall, data is set to 0. If a debugger is attached, data is set to the pid of the debugger process.

NOTES

Disabling tracing on a process should not be considered a security feature, as it is bypassable both by the kernel and privileged processes, and via other system mechanisms. As such, it should not be utilized to reliably protect cryptographic keying material or other confidential data.

RETURN VALUES

If an error occurs, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The procctl() system call will fail if:
[]
The arg parameter points outside the process's allocated address space.
[]
The cmd argument specifies an unsupported command.

The idtype argument specifies an unsupported identifier type.

[]
The calling process does not have permission to perform the requested operation on any of the selected processes.
[]
No processes matched the requested idtype and id.
[]
An invalid operation or flag was passed in arg for a PROC_SPROTECT command.
[]
The idtype argument is not equal to P_PID, or id is not equal to the pid of the calling process, for PROC_REAP_ACQUIRE or PROC_REAP_RELEASE requests.
[]
Invalid or undefined flags were passed to a PROC_REAP_KILL request.
[]
An invalid or zero signal number was requested for a PROC_REAP_KILL request.
[]
The PROC_REAP_RELEASE request was issued by the init(8) process.
[]
The PROC_REAP_ACQUIRE request was issued by a process that had already acquired reaper status and has not yet released it.
[]
The PROC_TRACE_CTL request was issued for a process already being traced.
[]
The PROC_TRACE_CTL request to re-enable tracing of the process (PROC_TRACE_CTL_ENABLE), or to disable persistence of PROC_TRACE_CTL_DISABLE on execve(2) was issued for a non-current process.
[]
The value of the integer data parameter for the PROC_TRACE_CTL request is invalid.

SEE ALSO

dtrace(1), kill(2), ktrace(2), ptrace(2), wait(2), hwpmc(4), init(8)

HISTORY

The procctl() function appeared in FreeBSD 10.0. The reaper facility is based on a similar feature of Linux and DragonflyBSD, and first appeared in FreeBSD 10.2.
August 21, 2015 Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64