On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:18:29 +0200, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> my understanding is that if a parent forks and the child does
> a ptrace(TRACEME) right before doing an exec(), the kernel should always
> halt it and wait indefinitely for the parent to start ptracing it.

Yes, just the parent must process the event (signal).  In your testcase the
parent finished before the signal could be delivered.  If the tracer exits the
tracee's tracing is finished and it continues freely.


> unfortunately, this behavior seems to be unreliable.

Fixed the races in your code and I do not see there any problem, do you?
The ptrace problems/testsuite is being maintained at:
  http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/utrace/tests


Regards,
Jan