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)

在Linux下，你可以在子进程中安装父进程死亡信号，例如:

#include <sys/prctl.h> // prctl(), PR_SET_PDEATHSIG
#include <signal.h> // signals
#include <unistd.h> // fork()
#include <stdio.h>  // perror()

// ...

pid_t ppid_before_fork = getpid();
pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid == -1) { perror(0); exit(1); }
if (pid) {
    ; // continue parent execution
} else {
    int r = prctl(PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, SIGTERM);
    if (r == -1) { perror(0); exit(1); }
    // test in case the original parent exited just
    // before the prctl() call
    if (getppid() != ppid_before_fork)
        exit(1);
    // continue child execution ...

请注意，在fork之前存储父进程id，并在prctl()之后在子进程中测试它，消除了prctl()和调用子进程的退出之间的竞争条件。

还要注意，子进程的父进程死亡信号在新创建的子进程中被清除。它不受execve()的影响。

如果我们确定负责收养所有孤儿的系统进程PID为1，这个测试就可以简化:

pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid == -1) { perror(0); exit(1); }
if (pid) {
    ; // continue parent execution
} else {
    int r = prctl(PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, SIGTERM);
    if (r == -1) { perror(0); exit(1); }
    // test in case the original parent exited just
    // before the prctl() call
    if (getppid() == 1)
        exit(1);
    // continue child execution ...

但是，依赖于系统进程的初始化和PID 1是不可移植的。posix . 1的授权- 2008指定:

调用进程的所有现有子进程和僵尸进程的父进程ID应设置为实现定义的系统进程的进程ID。也就是说，这些进程应该由一个特殊的系统进程继承。

传统上，采用所有孤儿进程的系统进程是PID 1，即init -它是所有进程的祖先。

在像Linux或FreeBSD这样的现代系统上，另一个进程可能具有这个角色。例如，在Linux上，一个进程可以调用prctl(PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER, 1)来将自己建立为继承其任何后代的所有孤儿的系统进程(参见Fedora 25上的一个例子)。

我认为不可能保证只使用标准POSIX调用。就像现实生活一样，一旦孩子被孕育出来，它就有了自己的生命。

父进程可以捕获大多数可能的终止事件，并尝试在此时终止子进程，但总有一些无法捕获。

例如，没有进程可以捕获SIGKILL。当内核处理这个信号时，它将杀死指定的进程，而不通知该进程。

扩展一下类比——唯一的另一种标准方式是，当孩子发现自己不再有父母时自杀。

使用prctl(2)有一种linux独有的方法——请参阅其他答案。

我把父pid用环境传递给子pid， 然后定期检查子进程中是否存在/proc/$ppid。

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

子进程是否有连接父进程的管道?如果是这样，那么写入时会收到SIGPIPE，读取时会收到EOF——这些情况都可以检测到。