set_tid_address(2)

set_tid_address2

Set pointer to thread id

Usage

#include <sys/syscall.h>      /* Definition of SYS_* constants */
#include <unistd.h>

pid_t syscall(SYS_set_tid_address, int *tidptr);

Note: glibc provides no wrapper for set_tid_address(), necessitating the use of syscall(2).

Library

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

Overview

For each thread, the kernel maintains two attributes (addresses) called set_child_tid and clear_child_tid. These two attributes contain the value NULL by default.

set_child_tid

If a thread is started using clone(2) with the CLONE_CHILD_SETTID flag, set_child_tid is set to the value passed in the ctid argument of that system call.

When set_child_tid is set, the very first thing the new thread does is to write its thread ID at this address.

clear_child_tid

If a thread is started using clone(2) with the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID flag, clear_child_tid is set to the value passed in the ctid argument of that system call.

The system call set_tid_address() sets the clear_child_tid value for the calling thread to tidptr.

When a thread whose clear_child_tid is not NULL terminates, then, if the thread is sharing memory with other threads, then 0 is written at the address specified in clear_child_tid and the kernel performs the following operation:

futex(clear_child_tid, FUTEX_WAKE, 1, NULL, NULL, 0);

The effect of this operation is to wake a single thread that is performing a futex wait on the memory location. Errors from the futex wake operation are ignored.

Return value

set_tid_address() always returns the caller's thread ID.

Errors

set_tid_address() always succeeds.

Releases

12 releases since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); the text changed 11 times.

  1. 3.1
  2. 4.0
  3. 5.0
  4. 6.0
  5. 7
  6. 8
  7. 9
  8. 10
  9. 11
  10. 12
  11. 13
  12. Arch

Standards

Linux.

History

Linux 2.5.48.

Details as given here are valid since Linux 2.5.49.

From man-pages 6.19-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.