openssh unix dev - Jun 2002 - [Bug 271] New: SSHD should unblock SIGCHLD - POSIX signal blocks survive exec()

http://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271

           Summary: SSHD should unblock SIGCHLD - POSIX signal blocks
                    survive exec()
           Product: Portable OpenSSH
           Version: -current
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P2
         Component: sshd
        AssignedTo: openssh-unix-dev at mindrot.org
        ReportedBy: Nicolas.Williams at ubsw.com


POSIX requires that signal block masks be inherited across exec() calls.

As a result, any porgram that needs to use specific signal and which has no 
good reason to accept inheritance of blocking of such signals should explicitly 
unblock those signals.

Furthermore, login-type programs should really unblock all signals, IMO (I have 
yet to find a scenario where I'd want my login shell to inherit and keep any
non-empty signal mask).

If sshd is started with SIGCHLD (SIGCLD) blocked then sshd ends up failing to 
notice the death of child processes, and therefore SSHv2 sessions hang on exit. 
Diagnosis is trivial on any OS that provides tools for inspecting the signal 
disposition of a process: if an sshd has at least one defunct process, sleeps 
in poll()/select() and has SIGCHLD blocked, and its SSHv2 client is hanging on 
exit, then the sshd must have been started with SIGCHLD blocked. Out of 
thousands of installations I have witnessed this behaviour on three systems.

At the very least sshd should, early on, use sigprocmask() to retrieve the 
current mask, clear SIGCHLD from the mask and set the modified mask. 
Preferably, perhaps, sshd should set an empty signal mask before exec()ing any 
program on behalf of a client.

Most shells (I've checked a few, including Bash) clear SIGCHLD from the
signal
mask, but generally don't clear all other signals from the mask.

NOTE: sigprocmask() can have its new signal mask pointer argument given as 
NULL, in which case sigprocmask() should only retrieve the current mask and 
ignore its first argument, but the compatibility shim provided by portable 
OpenSSH does not support this mode of operation. This can be fixed with a one-
liner.

NOTE: This issue is relevant to all POSIX-compatible platforms.

Thoughts?

Nico



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