fix: use PR_SET_PDEATHSIG so to ensure child processes are killed in a timely manner (#1626)

Some users have reported issues where child processes are not cleaned up
after Codex exits (e.g., https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/1570).

This is generally a tricky issue on operating systems: if a parent
process receives `SIGKILL`, then it terminates immediately and cannot
communicate with the child.

**It only helps on Linux**, but this PR introduces the use of `prctl(2)`
so that if the parent process dies, `SIGTERM` will be delivered to the
child process. Whereas previously, I believe that if Codex spawned a
long-running process (like `tsc --watch`) and the Codex process received
`SIGKILL`, the `tsc --watch` process would be reparented to the init
process and would never be killed. Now with the use of `prctl(2)`, the
`tsc --watch` process should receive `SIGTERM` in that scenario.

We still need to come up with a solution for macOS. I've started to look
at `launchd`, but I'm researching a number of options.
This commit is contained in:
Michael Bolin
2025-07-22 00:41:27 -07:00
committed by GitHub
parent 710f728124
commit d51654822f
3 changed files with 27 additions and 0 deletions

1
codex-rs/Cargo.lock generated
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@@ -669,6 +669,7 @@ dependencies = [
"fs2",
"futures",
"landlock",
"libc",
"maplit",
"mcp-types",
"mime_guess",

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@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ env-flags = "0.1.1"
eventsource-stream = "0.2.3"
fs2 = "0.4.3"
futures = "0.3"
libc = "0.2.174"
mcp-types = { path = "../mcp-types" }
mime_guess = "2.0"
rand = "0.9"

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@@ -384,6 +384,31 @@ async fn spawn_child_async(
cmd.env(CODEX_SANDBOX_NETWORK_DISABLED_ENV_VAR, "1");
}
// If this Codex process dies (including being killed via SIGKILL), we want
// any child processes that were spawned as part of a `"shell"` tool call
// to also be terminated.
// This relies on prctl(2), so it only works on Linux.
#[cfg(target_os = "linux")]
unsafe {
cmd.pre_exec(|| {
// This prctl call effectively requests, "deliver SIGTERM when my
// current parent dies."
if libc::prctl(libc::PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, libc::SIGTERM) == -1 {
return Err(io::Error::last_os_error());
}
// Though if there was a race condition and this pre_exec() block is
// run _after_ the parent (i.e., the Codex process) has already
// exited, then the parent is the _init_ process (which will never
// die), so we should just terminate the child process now.
if libc::getppid() == 1 {
libc::raise(libc::SIGTERM);
}
Ok(())
});
}
match stdio_policy {
StdioPolicy::RedirectForShellTool => {
// Do not create a file descriptor for stdin because otherwise some