Longjmp out of signal handler?

worth reading this: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/sigreturn.2.html in regard to how Linux handles signal handler invocation, and in this case how it manages signal handler exit, my reading of this suggests that executing a longjmp() from a signal handler (resulting in no call of sigreturn()) might be at best "undefined"... also have to take into account on which thread (and thus user stack) the setjmp() was called, and on which thread (and thus user stack) longjmp() in subsequently called also!

The way the kernel "calls" a signal handler is by interrupting the thread, saving the signal mask and processor state in a ucontext_t structure on the stack just beyond (below, on grows-down implementations) the interrupted code's stack pointer, and restarting execution at the address of the signal handler. The kernel does not need to keep track of any "this process is in a signal handler" state; that's entirely a consequence of the new call frame that was created.

If the interrupted thread was in the middle of a system call, the kernel will back out of the kernelspace code and adjust the return address to repeat the system call (if SA_RESTART is set for the signal and the system call is a restartable one) or put EINTR in the return code (if not restartable).

It should be noted that longjmp is async-signal-unsafe. This means it invokes undefined behavior if you call it from a signal handler if the signal interrupted another async-signal-unsafe function. But as long as the interrupted code is not using library functions, or only using library functions that are marked async-signal-safe, it's legal to call longjmp from a signal handler.

Finally, my answer is based on POSIX since the question is tagged unix. If the question were just about pure C, I suspect the answer is somewhat different, but signals are rather useless without POSIX anyway...

longjmp does not perform normal stack unwinding. Instead, the stack pointer is simply restored from the context saved by setjmp.

Here is an illustration on how this can bite you with non-async-safe critical parts in your code. It is advisable to e.g. mask the offending signal during critical code.