Coming back to life after Segmentation Violation

Question

Is it possible to restore the normal execution flow of a C program, after the Segmentation Fault error?

struct A {
    int x;
};
A* a = 0;

a->x = 123; // this is where segmentation violation occurs

// after handling the error I want to get back here:
printf("normal execution");
// the rest of my source code....

I want a mechanism similar to NullPointerException that is present in Java, C# etc.

Note: Please, don't tell me that there is an exception handling mechanism in C++ because I know that, dont' tell me I should check every pointer before assignment etc.

What I really want to achieve is to get back to normal execution flow as in the example above. I know some actions can be undertaken using POSIX signals. How should it look like? Other ideas?

Answer 1

You can catch segmentation faults using a signal handler, and decide to continue the excecution of the program (at your own risks).

The signal name is SIGSEGV.

You will have to use the sigaction() function, from the signal.h header.

Basically, it works the following way:

struct sigaction sa1;
struct sigaction sa2;

sa1.sa_handler = your_handler_func;
sa1.sa_flags   = 0;
sigemptyset( &sa1.sa_mask );

sigaction( SIGSEGV, &sa1, &sa2 );

Here's the prototype of the handler function:

void your_handler_func( int id );

As you can see, you don't need to return. The program's execution will continue, unless you decide to stop it by yourself from the handler.

Answer 2

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ucontext.h>

void safe_func(void)
{
    puts("Safe now ?");
    exit(0); //can't return to main, it's where the segfault occured.
}

void
handler (int cause, siginfo_t * info, void *uap)
{
  //For test. Never ever call stdio functions in a signal handler otherwise*/
  printf ("SIGSEGV raised at address %p\n", info->si_addr);
  ucontext_t *context = uap;
  /*On my particular system, compiled with gcc -O2, the offending instruction
  generated for "*f = 16;" is 6 bytes. Lets try to set the instruction
  pointer to the next instruction (general register 14 is EIP, on linux x86) */
  context->uc_mcontext.gregs[14] += 6; 
  //alternativly, try to jump to a "safe place"
  //context->uc_mcontext.gregs[14] = (unsigned int)safe_func;
}

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  struct sigaction sa;
  sa.sa_sigaction = handler;
  int *f = NULL;
  sigemptyset (&sa.sa_mask);
  sa.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO;
  if (sigaction (SIGSEGV, &sa, 0)) {
      perror ("sigaction");
      exit(1);
  }
  //cause a segfault
  *f = 16; 
  puts("Still Alive");
  return 0;
}

$ ./a.out
SIGSEGV raised at address (nil)
Still Alive

I would beat someone with a bat if I saw something like this in production code though, it's an ugly, for-fun hack. You'll have no idea if the segfault have corrupted some of your data, you'll have no sane way of recovering and know that everything is Ok now, there's no portable way of doing this. The only mildly sane thing you could do is try to log an error (use write() directly, not any of the stdio functions - they're not signal safe) and perhaps restart the program. For those cases you're much better off writing a superwisor process that monitors a child process exit, logs it and starts a new child process.