process(4) File Formats process(4)
NAME
process - process contract type
SYNOPSIS
/system/contract/process
DESCRIPTION
Process contracts allow processes to create a fault boundary around a set of subprocesses and observe events which occur within that bound-
ary.
Process contracts are managed using the contract(4) file system and the libcontract(3LIB) library. The process contract type directory is
/system/contract/process.
CREATION
A process contract is created when an LWP that has an active process contract template calls fork(2). Initially, the child process created
by fork() is the only resource managed by the contract. When an LWP that does not have an active process contract template calls fork(),
the child process created by fork() is added as a resource to the process contract of which the parent was a member.
EVENT TYPES
The following events types are defined:
CT_PR_EV_EMPTY
The last member of the process contract exited.
CT_PR_EV_FORK
A new process has been added to the process contract.
CT_PR_EV_EXIT
A member of the process contract exited.
CT_PR_EV_CORE
A process failed and dumped core. This could also occur if the process would have dumped core had appropriate coreadm(1M) options been
enabled and core file size was unlimited.
CT_PR_EV_SIGNAL
A process received a fatal signal from a process, other than the owner of the process contract, that is a member of a different process
contract.
CT_PR_EV_HWERR
A process was killed because of an uncorrectable hardware error.
TERMS
The following common contract terms, defined in contract(4), have process-contract specific attributes:
informative event set
The default value for the informative event set is (CT_PR_EV_CORE | CT_PR_EV_SIGNAL).
critical event set
The default value for the critical event set is (CT_PR_EV_EMPTY | CT_PR_EV_HWERR).
An attempt by a user without the {PRIV_CONTRACT_EVENT} privilege in its effective set to add an event, other than CT_PR_EV_EMPTY, to
the critical event set which is not present in the fatal set, or if the CT_PR_PGONLY parameter is set and the same user attempts to add
any event, other than CT_PR_EV_EMPTY, to the critical event set, fails.
The following contract terms can be read from or written to a process contract template using the named libcontract(3LIB) interfaces.
These contract terms are in addition to those described in contract(4).
fatal event set
Defines a set of events which, when generated, causes all members of the process contract to be killed with SIGKILL, or the intersec-
tion of the contract and the containing process group if the CT_PR_PGRPONLY parameter is set. Set this term with
ct_pr_tmpl_set_fatal(3CONTRACT). The fatal event set is restricted to CT_PR_EV_CORE, CT_PR_EV_SIGNAL, and CT_PR_EV_HWERR. For
CT_PR_EV_CORE and CT_PR_EV_SIGNAL events, the scope of SIGKILL is limited to those processes which the contract author or the event
source could have normally sent signals to.
The default value for the fatal event set is CT_PR_EV_HWERR.
If a user without the {PRIV_CONTRACT_EVENT} privilege in its effective set removes an event from the fatal event set which is present
in the critical event set, the corresponding event is automatically removed from the critical event set and added to the informative
event set.
parameter set
Defines miscellaneous other settings. Use ct_pr_tmpl_set_param(3CONTRACT) to set this term.
The default parameter set is empty.
The value is a bit vector comprised of some or all of:
CT_PR_INHERIT
If set, indicates that the process contract is to be inherited by the process contract the contract owner is a member of if the
contract owner exits before explicitly abandoning the process contract.
If not set, the process contract is automatically abandoned when the owner exits.
CT_PR_NOORPHAN
If set, all processes in a process contract are sent SIGKILL if the process contract is abandoned, either explicitly or because the
holder died and CT_PR_INHERIT was not set. The scope of SIGKILL is limited to those processes which the contract author or the
event source could have normally sent signals to.
If this is not set and the process contract is abandoned, the process contract is orphaned, that is, continues to exist without
owner.
CT_PR_PGRPONLY
If set, only those processes within the same process group and process contract as a fatal error-generating process are killed.
If not set, all processes within the process contract are killed if a member process encounters an error specified in the fatal
set.
If a user without the {PRIV_CONTRACT_EVENT} privilege in its effective set adds CT_PR_PGRPONLY to a template's parameter set, any
events other than CT_PR_EV_EMPTY are automatically removed from the critical event set and added to the informative event set.
CT_PR_REGENT
If set, the process contract can inherit unabandoned contracts left by exiting member processes.
If not set, indicates that the process contract should not inherit contracts from member processes. If a process exits before aban-
doning a contract it owns and is a member of a process contract which does not have CT_PR_REGENT set, the system automatically
abandons the contract.
If a regent process contract has inherited contracts and is abandoned by its owner, its inherited contracts are abandoned.
transfer contract
Specifies the ID of an empty process contract held by the caller whose inherited process contracts are to be transferred to the newly
created contract. Use ct_pr_tmpl_set_transfer(3CONTRACT) to set the tranfer contract. Attempts to specify a contract not held by the
calling process, or a contract which still has processes in it, fail.
The default transfer term is 0, that is, no contract.
STATUS
In addition to the standard items, the status object read from a status file descriptor contains the following items if CTD_FIXED is speci-
fied:
Fatal event set (term)
Parameter set (term)
Values equal to the terms used when the contract was written. Use
ct_pr_status_get_fatal(3contract)
ct_pr_status_get_param(3contract)
to obtain this information. respectively.
If CTD_ALL is specified, the following items are also available:
Member list
The PIDs of processes which are members of the process contract. Use ct_pr_status_get_members(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
Inherited contract list
The IDs of contracts which have been inherited by the process contract. Use ct_pr_status_get_contracts(3CONTRACT) to obtain this infor-
mation.
The following standard status items have different meanings in some situations:
Ownership state
If the process contract has a state of CTS_OWNED or CTS_INHERITED and is held by an entity in the global zone, but contains processes
in a non-global zone, it appears to have the state CTS_OWNED when observed by processes in the non-global zone.
Contract holder
If the process contract has a state of CTS_OWNED or CTS_INHERITED and is held by an entity in the global zone, but contains processes
in a non-global zone, it appears to be held by the non-global zone's zsched when observed by processes in the non-global zone.
EVENTS
In addition to the standard items, an event generated by a process contract contains the following information:
Generating PID
The process ID of the member process which experienced the event, or caused the contract event to be generated (in the case of
CT_PR_EV_EMPTY). Use ct_pr_event_get_pid(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
If the event type is CT_PR_EV_FORK, the event contains:
Parent PID
The process ID which forked [Generating PID]. Use ct_pr_event_get_ppid(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
If the event type is CT_PR_EV_EXIT, the event contains:
Exit status
The exit status of the process. Use ct_pr_event_get_exitstatus(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
If the event type is CT_PR_EV_CORE, the event can contain:
Process core name
The name of the per-process core file. Use ct_pr_event_get_pcorefile(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
Global core name
The name of the process's zone's global core file. Use ct_pr_event_get_gcorefile(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
Zone core name
The name of the system-wide core file in the global zone. Use ct_pr_event_get_zcorefile(3contract) to obtain this information.
See coreadm(1M) for more information about per-process, global, and system-wide core files.
If the event type is CT_PR_EV_SIGNAL, the event contains:
Signal
The number of the signal which killed the process. Use ct_pr_event_get_signal(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
It can contain:
sender
The PID of the process which sent the signal. Use ct_pr_event_get_sender(3CONTRACT) to obtain this information.
SEE ALSO
ctrun(1), ctstat(1), ctwatch(1), coreadm(1M), close(2), fork(2), ioctl(2), open(2), poll(2), ct_pr_event_get_exitstatus(3CONTRACT),
ct_pr_event_get_gcorefile(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_event_get_pcorefile(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_event_get_pid(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_event_get_ppid(3CON-
TRACT), ct_pr_event_get_signal(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_status_get_contracts(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_status_get_members(3CONTRACT),
ct_pr_tmpl_set_fatal(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_tmpl_set_param(3CONTRACT), ct_pr_tmpl_set_transfer(3CONTRACT), ct_tmpl_set_cookie(3CONTRACT),
ct_tmpl_set_critical(3CONTRACT), ct_tmpl_set_informative(3CONTRACT), libcontract(3LIB), contract(4), privileges(5)
SunOS 5.10 20 Jul 2004 process(4)