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)

如果你无法修改子进程，你可以尝试以下方法:

int pipes[2];
pipe(pipes)
if (fork() == 0) {
    close(pipes[1]); /* Close the writer end in the child*/
    dup2(pipes[0], STDIN_FILENO); /* Use reader end as stdin (fixed per  maxschlepzig */
    exec("sh -c 'set -o monitor; child_process & read dummy; kill %1'")
}

close(pipes[0]); /* Close the reader end in the parent */

这将在启用作业控制的shell进程中运行子进程。子进程在后台生成。shell等待换行符(或EOF)，然后终止子进程。

当父进程死亡时——不管是什么原因——它将关闭管道的一端。子shell将从read中获得一个EOF，并继续杀死后台的子进程。

另一种Linux特有的方法是在一个新的PID名称空间中创建父进程。然后它将是该名称空间中的PID 1，当它退出时，它的所有子节点将立即被SIGKILL杀死。

不幸的是，为了创建一个新的PID名称空间，您必须拥有CAP_SYS_ADMIN。但是，这种方法非常有效，在初始启动父进程之后不需要对父进程或子进程进行任何实际更改。

请参见clone(2)、pid_namespaces(7)和unshare(2)。

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。

这个解决方案对我很有效:

将stdin管道传递给子管道-您不必向流中写入任何数据。 Child从stdin无限读取到EOF。EOF表示父节点已经离开。 这是一种万无一失、便于携带的检测父节点何时离开的方法。即使父线程崩溃，操作系统也会关闭管道。

这是针对一个工作者类型的进程，它的存在只有在父进程存在时才有意义。

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