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Causes of Signal: Unix Unix-Like

Signals are used for inter-process communication in Unix/POSIX systems. A signal notifies a process of an event like an error or user input. Common signals include SIGINT for Ctrl-C, SIGTSTP for Ctrl-Z, and SIGPIPE for writing to a closed pipe. Signals are delivered asynchronously from the kernel to notify a process of exceptions or events.

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41 views2 pages

Causes of Signal: Unix Unix-Like

Signals are used for inter-process communication in Unix/POSIX systems. A signal notifies a process of an event like an error or user input. Common signals include SIGINT for Ctrl-C, SIGTSTP for Ctrl-Z, and SIGPIPE for writing to a closed pipe. Signals are delivered asynchronously from the kernel to notify a process of exceptions or events.

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What is signal?

are a limited form of inter-process communication (IPC), typically used in


-they
Unix, Unix-like, and other POSIX compliant operating systems.

-A signal is an asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread


within the same process in order to notify it of an event that occurred.

- The operating system uses signals to report exceptional situations to an executing


program. Some signals report errors such as references to invalid memory
addresses; others report asynchronous events, such as disconnection of a phone
line.
-Embedded programs may find signals useful for inter-process communications, as
the computational and memory footprint for signals is small.

Signals are similar to interrupts, the difference being that interrupts are mediated
by the processor and handled by the kernel while signals are mediated by the
kernel (possibly via system calls) and handled by processes. The kernel may pass
an interrupt as a signal to the process that caused it.

Causes of signal
A signal reports the occurrence of an exceptional event. These are some of the events that can
cause a signal:

 A program error such as dividing by zero


 Issuing an address outside the valid range.
 A user request to interrupt or terminate the program.
 The termination of a child process.
 Expiration of a timer or alarm.
 A call to kill or raise by the same process.
 A call to kill from another process. Signals are a limited but useful form of
inter-process communication.
 An attempt to perform an I/O operation that cannot be done.
- Each of these kinds of events generates its own particular kind
of signal.
Sending signal
The kill(2) system call sends a specified signal to a specified process, if permissions allow.
Similarly, the kill(1) command allows a user to send signals to processes. The raise(3)
library function sends the specified signal to the current process.

Exceptions such as division by zero or a segmentation violation will generate signals (here,
SIGFPE "floating point exception" and SIGSEGV "segmentation violation" respectively, which
both by default cause a core dump and a program exit).

The kernel can generate signals to notify processes of events. For example, SIGPIPE will be
generated when a process writes to a pipe which has been closed by the reader; by default, this
causes the process to terminate, which is convenient when constructing shell pipelines.

Typing certain key combinations at the controlling terminal of a running process causes the
system to send it certain signals:

 Ctrl-C (in older Unixes, DEL) sends an INT signal ("interrupt", SIGINT); by default, this
causes the process to terminate.
 Ctrl-Z sends a TSTP signal ("terminal stop", SIGTSTP); by default, this causes the
process to suspend execution.
 Ctrl-\ sends a QUIT signal (SIGQUIT); by default, this causes the process to terminate
and dump core.
 Ctrl-T (not supported on all UNIXes) sends an INFO signal (SIGINFO); by default, and
if supported by the command, this causes the operating system to show information about
the running command.

These default key combinations with modern operating systems can be changed with the stty
command.

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