zed-industries/zed · error

failed to attach signal handler

Error message

failed to attach signal handler

What it means

Raised in the crash reporter's connect_and_keepalive/init path when attaching the signal handler for crash interception fails. Without the handler, minidumps cannot be captured on crash, so the crash-reporting subsystem aborts setup with this error.

Source

Thrown at crates/crashes/src/crashes.rs:136

                // on macos this "ping" is needed to ensure that all our
                // `client.send_message` calls have been processed before we trigger the
                // minidump request.
                client.ping().ok();
                let r = client.request_dump(crash_context);
                if let Err(e) = &r {
                    eprintln!("failed to request dump: {:?}", e);
                }
                #[cfg(target_os = "macos")]
                macos::resume_all_other_threads();
                r.is_ok()
            } else {
                true
            };
            CrashEventResult::Handled(res)
        };
        crash_handler::make_crash_event(handler)
    })
    .expect("failed to attach signal handler");

    info!("crash signal handlers installed");
    send_crash_server_message(&client, CrashServerMessage::Init(crash_init));

    #[cfg(all(target_os = "linux", target_env = "gnu"))]
    if let Some(address) = abort_message_address() {
        send_crash_server_message(
            &client,
            CrashServerMessage::AbortMessageLocation(AbortMessageLocation {
                pid: process::id(),
                address,
            }),
        );
    }

    #[cfg(target_os = "linux")]
    handler.set_ptracer(Some(_crash_handler.id()));

View on GitHub (pinned to f4178619ac)

Solutions

1. Check that only one crash handler is installed (double init is rejected by some platforms)
2. Verify seccomp/sandbox policies allow sigaction on crash signals
3. Report if this occurs after a prior init in the same process

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at crates/crashes/src/crashes.rs:136 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of zed-industries/zed@f4178619ac (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/39eaa9097d19d3fc. Report an issue: GitHub.