Inside Solaris™ 9

Using Signals

Solaris supports the concept of sending software signals to a process. These signals are ways for other processes to interact with a running process outside the context of the hardware. The kill command is used to send a signal to a process. System administrators most often use the signals SIGHUP, SIGKILL, and SIGSTOP. The SIGHUP signal is used by some utilities as a way to notify the process to do something, such as reread its configuration file. The SIGHUP signal is also sent to a process if the telephone connection is lost or hangs up. The SIGKILL signal is used to abort a process, and the SIGSTOP signal is used to pause a process. Table 15.12 describes the most common signals an administrator is likely to use.

Table 15.12. ...