Signal Handling

These flashcards cover key concepts and definitions related to signal handling in operating systems.

Signal

An event generated by the OS to notify a process or thread of an important situation.

SIGHUP

Signal used to report disconnection of the user’s terminal.

SIGINT

Signal sent to interrupt a process, triggered by the user typing Ctrl + C.

SIGQUIT

Signal sent to quit a process, triggered by the user typing Ctrl + .

SIGILL

Signal generated when an illegal instruction is executed.

SIGTRAP

Signal generated by a breakpoint instruction, often used by a debugger.

SIGABRT

Signal generated when the abort() function is called, indicating an error.

SIGFPE

Signal generated by a floating-point exception.

SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2

User-defined signals useful for inter-process communication.

SIGCHLD

Signal sent to the parent process when a child process has terminated.

sigaction

A library function used to install a signal handler.

Handler Restrictions

The signal handler must perform minimal work and return to the OS quickly.

Thread Parameters

Struct used to pass parameters to a thread handling a signal.

pthread_create

Function used to create a new thread in a program.

Memory Leak

A situation where dynamically allocated memory is not released.

printf

A standard output function that is typically not recommended in signal handlers.