Hangups about vhangup()

[Joe Kelsey]

>From: pc at ukc.UUCP (R.P.A.Collinson)
>
>3)	A write/read to an IDEAD inode results in a SIGKILL being sent
>	to the offending process.
>	The user has no business leaving a background process running
>	which writes or reads when the user has gone away.

I object strenuously to any solution which generates a SIGKILL!  This
is completely bogus!  I can't write software which ignores this signal!
What you want is to quietly replace the inode referring to the terminal
with one referring to /dev/null and also send a SIGHUP.  The current
implementation correctly sends the SIGHUP, but for processes which are
either nohup or choose to ignore SIGHUP, this doesn't work.  Going
around killing processes for no reason is really and extremely bad
practice and should not be placed in any kernel code!

>(On the UCB/System V discussion, Bill Joy did us all a disservice in csh when
>he allowed people to leave background jobs running without having said
>nohup).

I see absolutely no disservice here.  You can do exactly the same thing
in System V.  The problem is NOT csh - the problem is a process which
CHOOSES to ignore SIGHUP!  Let's stop this ucb bad mouthing unless you
really know what you are talking about.

BTW - I have heard from jwp at sdchema that there is an implementation of
a new system call called chfile() which will substitute one file for
another and does EXACTLY what I (and chris at umcp-cs) want.  I am
anxiously awaiting more details about the code so I can install it
here.  I could write it myself, but why re-invent the wheel.

/Joe