All of these interfaces are available on Linux,
and are used for getting and setting the
process group ID (PGID) of a process.
The preferred, POSIX.1-specified ways of doing this are:
getpgrp (void), for retrieving the calling process's PGID; and
setpgid (), for setting a process's PGID.
setpgid () sets the PGID of the process specified by
pid to
pgid . If
pid is zero, then the process ID of the calling process is used.
If
pgid is zero, then the PGID of the process specified by
pid is made the same as its process ID.
If
setpgid () is used to move a process from one process
group to another (as is done by some shells when creating pipelines),
both process groups must be part of the same session (see
setsid(2) and
credentials(7) ). In this case,
the pgid specifies an existing process group to be joined and the
session ID of that group must match the session ID of the joining process.
The POSIX.1 version of
getpgrp (), which takes no arguments,
returns the PGID of the calling process.
getpgid () returns the PGID of the process specified by
pid . If
pid is zero, the process ID of the calling process is used.
(Retrieving the PGID of a process other than the caller is rarely
necessary, and the POSIX.1
getpgrp () is preferred for that task.)
The System V-style
setpgrp (), which takes no arguments, is equivalent to
"setpgid(0, 0)" .
The BSD-specific
setpgrp () call, which takes arguments
pid and
pgid , is equivalent to
"setpgid(pid, pgid)" .
The BSD-specific
getpgrp () call, which takes a single
pid argument, is equivalent to
"getpgid(pid)" .
RETURN VALUE
On success,
setpgid () and
setpgrp () return zero.
On error, -1 is returned, and
errno is set appropriately.
The POSIX.1
getpgrp () always returns the PGID of the caller.
getpgid (), and the BSD-specific
getpgrp () return a process group on success.
On error, -1 is returned, and
errno is set appropriately.
ERRORS
EACCES
An attempt was made to change the process group ID
of one of the children of the calling process and the child had
already performed an
execve(2) setpgrp ()).
EINVAL
pgid is less than 0
setpgrp ()).
EPERM
An attempt was made to move a process into a process group in a
different session, or to change the process
group ID of one of the children of the calling process and the
child was in a different session, or to change the process group ID of
a session leader
setpgrp ()).
ESRCH
For
getpgid (): pid does not match any process.
For
setpgid (): pid is not the calling process and not a child of the calling process.
CONFORMING TO
setpgid () and the version of
getpgrp () with no arguments
conform to POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2001 also specifies
getpgid () and the version of
setpgrp () that takes no arguments.
(POSIX.1-2008 marks this
setpgrp () specification as obsolete.)
The version of
getpgrp () with one argument and the version of
setpgrp () that takes two arguments derive from 4.2BSD,
and are not specified by POSIX.1.
NOTES
A child created via
fork(2) inherits its parent's process group ID.
The PGID is preserved across an
execve(2) .
Each process group is a member of a session and each process is a
member of the session of which its process group is a member.
A session can have a controlling terminal.
At any time, one (and only one) of the process groups
in the session can be the foreground process group
for the terminal;
the remaining process groups are in the background.
If a signal is generated from the terminal (e.g., typing the
interrupt key to generate
SIGINT ), that signal is sent to the foreground process group.
(See
termios(3) for a description of the characters that generate signals.)
Only the foreground process group may
read(2) from the terminal;
if a background process group tries to
read(2) from the terminal, then the group is sent a
SIGTSTP signal, which suspends it.
The
tcgetpgrp(3) and
tcsetpgrp(3) functions are used to get/set the foreground
process group of the controlling terminal.
The
setpgid () and
getpgrp () calls are used by programs such as
bash(1) to create process groups in order to implement shell job control.
If a session has a controlling terminal, and the
CLOCAL flag for that terminal is not set,
and a terminal hangup occurs, then the session leader is sent a
SIGHUP . If the session leader exits, then a
SIGHUP signal will also be sent to each process in the foreground
process group of the controlling terminal.
If the exit of the process causes a process group to become orphaned,
and if any member of the newly orphaned process group is stopped, then a
SIGHUP signal followed by a
SIGCONT signal will be sent to each process
in the newly orphaned process group.
This page is part of release 3.19 of the Linux
man-pages project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.