sigreturn(2)

sigreturn2

Return from signal

Usage

#include <signal.h>

int

sigreturn(const ucontext_t *scp);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

The sigreturn() system call allows users to atomically unmask, switch stacks, and return from a signal context. The thread's signal mask and stack status are restored from the context structure pointed to by scp. The system call does not return; the whole userspace context as specified by scp, including the userspace stack pointer, all general-purpose registers, coprocessor state, process status register, and program counter are restored from the context. Execution resumes at the program counter from the specified context.

This system call is used by the kernel-provided signal trampoline code, located in the virtual DSO (VDSO) on some architectures or as raw code in the shared page if VDSO is not provided, when returning from a signal to the previously executing program.

Return values

If successful, the system call does not return. Otherwise, a value of -1 may be returned, with errno set to indicate the error. Some conditions detected by hardware result in the delivery of a synchronous trap signal to the thread, in addition to or instead of setting the system call error code.

Errors

The sigreturn() system call will fail and the thread context will remain unchanged if one of the following occurs.

[EFAULT]

The scp argument points to memory that is not a valid part of the process address space.

[EINVAL]

The process status longword is invalid or would improperly raise the privilege level of the process.

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 44 times.

  1. 2.0.5–2.1.7.1
  2. 2.2.2–3.3
  3. 3.4
  4. 3.5–3.5.1
  5. 4.0
  6. 4.1–4.3
  7. 4.4
  8. 4.5–4.6.2
  9. 4.7–4.11
  10. 5.0
  11. 5.1–6.3
  12. 6.4
  13. 7.0
  14. 7.1
  15. 7.2
  16. 7.3
  17. 7.4
  18. 8.0
  19. 8.1
  20. 8.2
  21. 8.3
  22. 8.4
  23. 9.0
  24. 9.1
  25. 9.2
  26. 9.3
  27. 10.0
  28. 10.1
  29. 10.2
  30. 10.3
  31. 10.4
  32. 11.0
  33. 11.1
  34. 11.2
  35. 11.3
  36. 11.4
  37. 12.0
  38. 12.1
  39. 12.2
  40. 12.3
  41. 12.4
  42. 13.0–13.2
  43. 13.3–14.5
  44. 15.0
  45. 15.1–16.0

History

The sigreturn() system call appeared in 4.3BSD.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.