[linux-audio-dev] Signals and Threads

[Michael Ost]

Howdy, list:

Does a signal handler (like segfault, or divide by zero) run at the
priority of the thread that it gets generated for? 

Say thread 1 is normal prio and thread 2 is SCHED_RR thread. In normal
operation thread 1 can't interrupt or supersede thread 2. Does this hold
if, say, thread 1 gets a SEGV signal? Does its handler wait until thread
2 is not running to do its thing? And does it get interrupted if thread
2 wakes up while the handler is working?

It would seem that signal handlers use a threads priority, from scanning
the web and docs, given that threads have their own signal masks and
handlers. But perhaps one of you knows this stuff off the top of your
head?

I want to improve how our system reacts to a crash, but I'm concerned
that the real time audio processing thread will keep the signal handler
from reacting promptly.

I'm running Linux kernel 2.4.19 with glibc 2.3.2 which provides the
libpthread implementation we use to create threads.

Thanks in advance for any help... mo

=========================
Michael Ost, Software Architect
Muse Research, Inc.
most at museresearch.com

PS: moderator, I tried to remove a similar message sent from another
email account, but the 'remove' code didn't work.