Berkeley DB

Chapter 11. Programmer Notes

Application signal handling: When applications using Berkeley DB receive signals, it is important that they exit gracefully, discarding any Berkeley DB locks that they may hold. This is normally done by setting a flag when a signal arrives and then checking for that flag periodically within the application. Because Berkeley DB is not re-entrant, the signal handler should not attempt to release locks and/or close the database handles itself. Re-entering Berkeley DB is not guaranteed to work correctly, and the results are undefined.

If an application exits holding a lock, the situation is no different than if the ...