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.

这种方法会产生两个问题:

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)

一些海报已经提到了管道和kqueue。事实上，你也可以通过socketpair()调用创建一对连接的Unix域套接字。套接字类型应该是SOCK_STREAM。

Let us suppose you have the two socket file descriptors fd1, fd2. Now fork() to create the child process, which will inherit the fds. In the parent you close fd2 and in the child you close fd1. Now each process can poll() the remaining open fd on its own end for the POLLIN event. As long as each side doesn't explicitly close() its fd during normal lifetime, you can be fairly sure that a POLLHUP flag should indicate the other's termination (no matter clean or not). Upon notified of this event, the child can decide what to do (e.g. to die).

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <poll.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
    int sv[2];        /* sv[0] for parent, sv[1] for child */
    socketpair(AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0, sv);

    pid_t pid = fork();

    if ( pid > 0 ) {  /* parent */
        close(sv[1]);
        fprintf(stderr, "parent: pid = %d\n", getpid());
        sleep(100);
        exit(0);

    } else {          /* child */
        close(sv[0]);
        fprintf(stderr, "child: pid = %d\n", getpid());

        struct pollfd mon;
        mon.fd = sv[1];
        mon.events = POLLIN;

        poll(&mon, 1, -1);
        if ( mon.revents & POLLHUP )
            fprintf(stderr, "child: parent hung up\n");
        exit(0);
    }
}

您可以尝试编译上面的概念验证代码，并在./a这样的终端中运行它。&。你有大约100秒的时间来尝试通过各种信号杀死父PID，否则它就会退出。在任何一种情况下，您都应该看到消息“child: parent hung up”。

与使用SIGPIPE处理程序的方法相比，该方法不需要尝试write()调用。

这种方法也是对称的，即进程可以使用相同的通道来监视彼此的存在。

这个解决方案只调用POSIX函数。我在Linux和FreeBSD中尝试了这个方法。我认为它应该在其他unix上工作，但我还没有真正测试过。

参见:

Linux手册中的unix(7)， FreeBSD的unix(4)， poll(2)， socketpair(2)， Linux上的socket(7)。

通过在prctl()系统调用中指定PR_SET_PDEATHSIG选项，子进程可以要求内核在父进程死亡时传递SIGHUP(或其他信号)，就像这样:

prctl（PR_SET_PDEATHSIG， SIGHUP）;

详见man 2 prctl。

编辑:这是linux专用的

如果父母去世，孤儿的PPID变为1 -你只需要检查你自己的PPID。 在某种程度上，这就是上面提到的轮询。 这是它的外壳部分:

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

受到这里另一个答案的启发，我提出了以下全posix解决方案。一般思想是在父进程和子进程之间创建一个中间进程，其目的只有一个:注意父进程何时死亡，并显式地终止子进程。

当子进程中的代码无法修改时，这种解决方案非常有用。

int p[2];
pipe(p);
pid_t child = fork();
if (child == 0) {
    close(p[1]); // close write end of pipe
    setpgid(0, 0); // prevent ^C in parent from stopping this process
    child = fork();
    if (child == 0) {
        close(p[0]); // close read end of pipe (don't need it here)
        exec(...child process here...);
        exit(1);
    }
    read(p[0], 1); // returns when parent exits for any reason
    kill(child, 9);
    exit(1);
}

使用这种方法有两个小注意事项:

如果你故意杀死中间进程，那么当父进程死亡时，子进程不会被杀死。 如果子进程在父进程之前退出，那么中间进程将尝试杀死原来的子进程pid，该进程现在可以引用一个不同的进程。(这可以通过在中间过程中编写更多代码来解决。)

顺便说一句，我使用的实际代码是Python的。为了完整起见，这里是:

def run(*args):
    (r, w) = os.pipe()
    child = os.fork()
    if child == 0:
        os.close(w)
        os.setpgid(0, 0)
        child = os.fork()
        if child == 0:
            os.close(r)
            os.execl(args[0], *args)
            os._exit(1)
        os.read(r, 1)
        os.kill(child, 9)
        os._exit(1)
    os.close(r)

我正在尝试解决同样的问题，但由于我的程序必须运行在OS X上，所以只运行linux的解决方案对我不起作用。

我得到了与本页其他人相同的结论——当父母去世时，没有一种与posix兼容的方式来通知孩子。所以我想出了次好的办法——让孩子投票。

当父进程(由于任何原因)终止时，子进程将变成进程1。如果子进程只是定期轮询，它可以检查父进程是否为1。如果是，子进程应该退出。

这不是很好，但它可以工作，并且比本文其他地方建议的TCP套接字/锁文件轮询解决方案更容易。