I was wondering if some of you Postgres hackers could advise me on the safety of the following. I have written a postgres C function that uses a popen linux system call. Orginally when I first tried it I kept getting an ECHILD. I read a little bit more on the pclose function and the wait system calls and discoverd that on LINUX if the signal handler for SIGCHLD is set to SIG_IGN you will get the ECHILD error on pclose(or wait4 for that matter). So I did some snooping around in the postgres backend code and found that in the traffic cop that the SIGCHLD signal handler is set to SIG_IGN. So in my C function right before the popen call I set the signal handler for SIGCHLD to SIG_DFL and right after the pclose I set it back to SIG_IGN. I tested this and it seems to solve my problem. Not knowing much about the internals of the postgres backend I would like to know... Is setting the signal handler to SIG_IGN temorarily going to do anything funky with by database or the backend? Thanks in advance for your insights, Scott Shealy ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
