Linux System Programming

Chapter 9. Signals

Signals are software interrupts that provide a mechanism for handling asynchronous events. These events can originate from outside the system—such as when the user generates the interrupt character (usually via Ctrl-C)—or from activities within the program or kernel, such as when the process executes code that divides by zero. As a primitive form of interprocess communication (IPC), one process can also send a signal to another process.

The key point is not just that the events occur asynchronously—the user, for example, can press Ctrl-C at any point in the program’s execution—but also that the program handles the signals asynchronously. The signal-handling functions are registered with the kernel, which invokes the functions asynchronously from the rest of the program when the signals are delivered.

Signals have been part of Unix since the early days. Over time, however, they have evolved—most noticeably in terms of reliability, as signals could once get lost, and in terms of functionality, as signals may now carry user-defined payloads. At first, different Unix systems made incompatible changes to signals. Thankfully, POSIX came to the rescue and standardized signal handling. This standard is what Linux provides, and is what we’ll discuss here.

In this chapter, we’ll start with an overview of signals, and a discussion of their use and misuse. We’ll then cover the various Linux interfaces that manage and manipulate signals.

Most nontrivial applications interact with ...