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)

为了完整起见。在macOS上你可以使用kqueue:

void noteProcDeath(
    CFFileDescriptorRef fdref, 
    CFOptionFlags callBackTypes, 
    void* info) 
{
    // LOG_DEBUG(@"noteProcDeath... ");

    struct kevent kev;
    int fd = CFFileDescriptorGetNativeDescriptor(fdref);
    kevent(fd, NULL, 0, &kev, 1, NULL);
    // take action on death of process here
    unsigned int dead_pid = (unsigned int)kev.ident;

    CFFileDescriptorInvalidate(fdref);
    CFRelease(fdref); // the CFFileDescriptorRef is no longer of any use in this example

    int our_pid = getpid();
    // when our parent dies we die as well.. 
    LOG_INFO(@"exit! parent process (pid %u) died. no need for us (pid %i) to stick around", dead_pid, our_pid);
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}


void suicide_if_we_become_a_zombie(int parent_pid) {
    // int parent_pid = getppid();
    // int our_pid = getpid();
    // LOG_ERROR(@"suicide_if_we_become_a_zombie(). parent process (pid %u) that we monitor. our pid %i", parent_pid, our_pid);

    int fd = kqueue();
    struct kevent kev;
    EV_SET(&kev, parent_pid, EVFILT_PROC, EV_ADD|EV_ENABLE, NOTE_EXIT, 0, NULL);
    kevent(fd, &kev, 1, NULL, 0, NULL);
    CFFileDescriptorRef fdref = CFFileDescriptorCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, fd, true, noteProcDeath, NULL);
    CFFileDescriptorEnableCallBacks(fdref, kCFFileDescriptorReadCallBack);
    CFRunLoopSourceRef source = CFFileDescriptorCreateRunLoopSource(kCFAllocatorDefault, fdref, 0);
    CFRunLoopAddSource(CFRunLoopGetMain(), source, kCFRunLoopDefaultMode);
    CFRelease(source);
}

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。

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)。

正如其他人指出的那样，当父进程退出时，依赖父进程pid变成1是不可移植的。不需要等待特定的父进程ID，只需要等待ID发生变化:

pit_t pid = getpid();
switch (fork())
{
    case -1:
    {
        abort(); /* or whatever... */
    }
    default:
    {
        /* parent */
        exit(0);
    }
    case 0:
    {
        /* child */
        /* ... */
    }
}

/* Wait for parent to exit */
while (getppid() != pid)
    ;

如果不想以全速轮询，可以根据需要添加微睡眠。

在我看来，这个选项比使用管道或依赖于信号更简单。

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)