M_HANGUP

The M_HANGUP message is sent upstream by a driver to report that it can no longer send data upstream. For example, this might be due to an error, or to a remote line connection being dropped. When the message reaches the stream head, the stream is marked so that all subsequent write(2) and putmsg(2) calls issued to the stream will fail and return an ENXIO error. Those ioctls that cause messages to be sent downstream are also failed. POLLHUP is set if the stream is being polled.

Subsequent read(2) or getmsg(2) calls to the stream will not generate an error. These calls will return any messages (according to their function) that were on, or in transit to, the stream-head read queue before the M_HANGUP message was received. When all such messages have been read, read(2) returns 0 and getmsg(2) will set each of its two length fields to 0.

This message also causes a SIGHUP signal to be sent to the controlling process instead of the foreground process group, as the allocation and deallocation of controlling terminals to a session is the responsibility of the controlling process.