Subject: in kernel signalling
To: None <tech-kern@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Eric Haszlakiewicz <haszlaki@UAccess.NET>
List: port-alpha
Date: 04/26/1998 00:31:21
	I was looking through alpha/machdep.c and noticed the sendsig(...)
function seems to go through a lot of trouble when killing a process.  It
ends up re-signalling the process instead of just calling sigexit(...)
like the i386 machdep does. (haven't looked at any others)
    I was wondering why it does this.
It would appear to be clearer to simply call sigexit, not mention it ends up
being a much shorter code path.  Also the ensuing core dump wouldn't have
any changed value for the SIGILL handler which could cause confusion if,
while debugging the dump, you happened to look at that.
    The only reason I found for using this method is that you'd get a
final ktrace output for the signal, but wouldn't the core dump contain
what signal the program crashed with anyway?

    Is there some other reason for doing this that I'm missing?

thanks,
eric
haszlaki@uaccess.net