How to make child process die after parent exits?

Question

Suppose I have a process which spawns exactly one child process. Now when the parent process exits for whatever reason (normally or abnormally, by kill, ^C, assert failure or anything else) I want the child process to die. How to do that correctly?

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Some similar question on stackoverflow:

• (asked earlier) How can I cause a child process to exit when the parent does?
• (asked later) Are child processes created with fork() automatically killed when the parent is killed?

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Some similar question on stackoverflow for Windows:

• How do I automatically destroy child processes in Windows?
• Kill child process when parent process is killed

Answer 1

For completeness sake. On macOS you can use kqueue:

void noteProcDeath(
    CFFileDescriptorRef fdref, 
    CFOptionFlags callBackTypes, 
    void* info) 
{
    // LOG_DEBUG(@"noteProcDeath... ");

    struct kevent kev;
    int fd = CFFileDescriptorGetNativeDescriptor(fdref);
    kevent(fd, NULL, 0, &kev, 1, NULL);
    // take action on death of process here
    unsigned int dead_pid = (unsigned int)kev.ident;

    CFFileDescriptorInvalidate(fdref);
    CFRelease(fdref); // the CFFileDescriptorRef is no longer of any use in this example

    int our_pid = getpid();
    // when our parent dies we die as well.. 
    LOG_INFO(@"exit! parent process (pid %u) died. no need for us (pid %i) to stick around", dead_pid, our_pid);
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}


void suicide_if_we_become_a_zombie(int parent_pid) {
    // int parent_pid = getppid();
    // int our_pid = getpid();
    // LOG_ERROR(@"suicide_if_we_become_a_zombie(). parent process (pid %u) that we monitor. our pid %i", parent_pid, our_pid);

    int fd = kqueue();
    struct kevent kev;
    EV_SET(&kev, parent_pid, EVFILT_PROC, EV_ADD|EV_ENABLE, NOTE_EXIT, 0, NULL);
    kevent(fd, &kev, 1, NULL, 0, NULL);
    CFFileDescriptorRef fdref = CFFileDescriptorCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, fd, true, noteProcDeath, NULL);
    CFFileDescriptorEnableCallBacks(fdref, kCFFileDescriptorReadCallBack);
    CFRunLoopSourceRef source = CFFileDescriptorCreateRunLoopSource(kCFAllocatorDefault, fdref, 0);
    CFRunLoopAddSource(CFRunLoopGetMain(), source, kCFRunLoopDefaultMode);
    CFRelease(source);
}

Answer 2

Historically, from UNIX v7, the process system has detected orphanity of processes by checking a process' parent id. As I say, historically, the init(8) system process is a special process by only one reason: It cannot die. It cannot die because the kernel algorithm to deal with assigning a new parent process id, depends on this fact. when a process executes its exit(2) call (by means of a process system call or by external task as sending it a signal or the like) the kernel reassigns all children of this process the id of the init process as their parent process id. This leads to the most easy test, and most portable way of knowing if a process has got orphan. Just check the result of the getppid(2) system call and if it is the process id of the init(2) process then the process got orphan before the system call.

Two issues emerge from this approach that can lead to issues:

• first, we have the possibility of changing the init process to any user process, so How can we assure that the init process will always be parent of all orphan processes? Well, in the exit system call code there's a explicit check to see if the process executing the call is the init process (the process with pid equal to 1) and if that's the case, the kernel panics (It should not be able anymore to maintain the process hierarchy) so it is not permitted for the init process to do an exit(2) call.
• second, there's a race condition in the basic test exposed above. Init process' id is assumed historically to be 1, but that's not warranted by the POSIX approach, that states (as exposed in other response) that only a system's process id is reserved for that purpose. Almost no posix implementation does this, and you can assume in original unix derived systems that having 1 as response of getppid(2) system call is enough to assume the process is orphan. Another way to check is to make a getppid(2) just after the fork and compare that value with the result of a new call. This simply doesn't work in all cases, as both call are not atomic together, and the parent process can die after the fork(2) and before the first getppid(2) system call. The processparent id only changes once, when its parent does anexit(2)call, so this should be enough to check if thegetppid(2)result changed between calls to see that parent process has exit. This test is not valid for the actual children of the init process, because they are always children ofinit(8)`, but you can assume safely these processes as having no parent either (except when you substitute in a system the init process)

Answer 3

Under POSIX, the exit(), _exit() and _Exit() functions are defined to:

• If the process is a controlling process, the SIGHUP signal shall be sent to each process in the foreground process group of the controlling terminal belonging to the calling process.

So, if you arrange for the parent process to be a controlling process for its process group, the child should get a SIGHUP signal when the parent exits. I'm not absolutely sure that happens when the parent crashes, but I think it does. Certainly, for the non-crash cases, it should work fine.

Note that you may have to read quite a lot of fine print - including the Base Definitions (Definitions) section, as well as the System Services information for exit() and setsid() and setpgrp() - to get the complete picture. (So would I!)

Answer 4

I found 2 solutions, both not perfect.

1.Kill all children by kill(-pid) when received SIGTERM signal.
Obviously, this solution can not handle "kill -9", but it do work for most case and very simple because it need not to remember all child processes.

    var childProc = require('child_process').spawn('tail', ['-f', '/dev/null'], {stdio:'ignore'});

    var counter=0;
    setInterval(function(){
      console.log('c  '+(++counter));
    },1000);

    if (process.platform.slice(0,3) != 'win') {
      function killMeAndChildren() {
        /*
        * On Linux/Unix(Include Mac OS X), kill (-pid) will kill process group, usually
        * the process itself and children.
        * On Windows, an JOB object has been applied to current process and children,
        * so all children will be terminated if current process dies by anyway.
        */
        console.log('kill process group');
        process.kill(-process.pid, 'SIGKILL');
      }

      /*
      * When you use "kill pid_of_this_process", this callback will be called
      */
      process.on('SIGTERM', function(err){
        console.log('SIGTERM');
        killMeAndChildren();
      });
    }

By same way, you can install 'exit' handler like above way if you call process.exit somewhere. Note: Ctrl+C and sudden crash have automatically been processed by OS to kill process group, so no more here.

2.Use chjj/pty.js to spawn your process with controlling terminal attached.
When you kill current process by anyway even kill -9, all child processes will be automatically killed too (by OS?). I guess that because current process hold another side of the terminal, so if current process dies, the child process will get SIGPIPE so dies.

    var pty = require('pty.js');

    //var term =
    pty.spawn('any_child_process', [/*any arguments*/], {
      name: 'xterm-color',
      cols: 80,
      rows: 30,
      cwd: process.cwd(),
      env: process.env
    });
    /*optionally you can install data handler
    term.on('data', function(data) {
      process.stdout.write(data);
    });
    term.write(.....);
    */

Answer 5

I don't believe it's possible to guarantee that using only standard POSIX calls. Like real life, once a child is spawned, it has a life of its own.

It is possible for the parent process to catch most possible termination events, and attempt to kill the child process at that point, but there's always some that can't be caught.

For example, no process can catch a SIGKILL. When the kernel handles this signal it will kill the specified process with no notification to that process whatsoever.

To extend the analogy - the only other standard way of doing it is for the child to commit suicide when it finds that it no longer has a parent.

There is a Linux-only way of doing it with prctl(2) - see other answers.

Answer 6

If parent dies, PPID of orphans change to 1 - you only need to check your own PPID. In a way, this is polling, mentioned above. here is shell piece for that:

check_parent () {
      parent=`ps -f|awk '$2=='$PID'{print $3 }'`
      echo "parent:$parent"
      let parent=$parent+0
      if [[ $parent -eq 1 ]]; then
        echo "parent is dead, exiting"
        exit;
      fi
}


PID=$$
cnt=0
while [[ 1 = 1 ]]; do
  check_parent
  ... something
done