How to prevent SIGPIPEs (or handle them properly)

Question

I have a small server program that accepts connections on a TCP or local UNIX socket, reads a simple command and (depending on the command) sends a reply.

The problem

Answer 1

Under a modern POSIX system (i.e. Linux), you can use the sigprocmask() function.

#include 

void block_signal(int signal_to_block /* i.e. SIGPIPE */ )
{
    sigset_t set;
    sigset_t old_state;

    // get the current state
    //
    sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, &old_state);

    // add signal_to_block to that existing state
    //
    set = old_state;
    sigaddset(&set, signal_to_block);

    // block that signal also
    //
    sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &set, NULL);

    // ... deal with old_state if required ...
}

If you want to restore the previous state later, make sure to save the old_state somewhere safe. If you call that function multiple times, you need to either use a stack or only save the first or last old_state... or maybe have a function which removes a specific blocked signal.

For more info read the man page.