Understanding Linux Signals with simple C program

Signals are a limited form of inter-process communication (IPC), typically used in 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. Signals originated in 1970s Bell Labs Unix and have been more recently specified in the POSIX standard.

When a signal is sent, the operating system interrupts the target process’ normal flow of execution to deliver the signal. Execution can be interrupted during any non-atomic instruction. If the process has previously registered a signal handler, that routine is executed. Otherwise, the default signal handler is executed.

Embedded programs may find signals useful for interprocess 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 (typical examples are SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, SIGILL and SIGFPE).

 $ vim linux_signal.c 
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

void ouch(int sig) {
        printf("OUCH! - I got signal %d\n", sig);
        (void) signal(SIGINT, SIG_DFL);
}

int main() {
        (void) signal(SIGINT, ouch);
        while(1) {
                printf("Hello World!\n");
                sleep(1);
        }
}
 $ gcc -o linux_signal linux_signal.c

Note: below command starts the execution of main, which is an infinite loop printing “Hello World” text on new line, after every 1 sec, to interrupt this using signal, press “Ctrl+C”

$ ./linux_signal

Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
^COUCH! – I got signal 2
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
Hello World!
^C

The declaration of Linux/Unix signal looks like as below,

       #include <signal.h>
       typedef void (*sighandler_t)(int);
       sighandler_t signal(int signum, sighandler_t handler);

The behavior of signal() varies across UNIX versions, and has also varied historically across different versions of Linux. Avoid its use: use sigaction(2) instead. See Portability below. signal() sets the disposition of the signal signum to handler, which is either SIG_IGN, SIG_DFL, or the
address of a programmer-defined function (a “signal handler”).

Following command, provides the list of all possible supported signals by the Linux.

$ kill -l
 1) SIGHUP	 2) SIGINT	 3) SIGQUIT	 4) SIGILL	 5) SIGTRAP
 6) SIGABRT	 7) SIGBUS	 8) SIGFPE	 9) SIGKILL	10) SIGUSR1
11) SIGSEGV	12) SIGUSR2	13) SIGPIPE	14) SIGALRM	15) SIGTERM
16) SIGSTKFLT	17) SIGCHLD	18) SIGCONT	19) SIGSTOP	20) SIGTSTP
21) SIGTTIN	22) SIGTTOU	23) SIGURG	24) SIGXCPU	25) SIGXFSZ
26) SIGVTALRM	27) SIGPROF	28) SIGWINCH	29) SIGIO	30) SIGPWR
31) SIGSYS	34) SIGRTMIN	35) SIGRTMIN+1	36) SIGRTMIN+2	37) SIGRTMIN+3
38) SIGRTMIN+4	39) SIGRTMIN+5	40) SIGRTMIN+6	41) SIGRTMIN+7	42) SIGRTMIN+8
43) SIGRTMIN+9	44) SIGRTMIN+10	45) SIGRTMIN+11	46) SIGRTMIN+12	47) SIGRTMIN+13
48) SIGRTMIN+14	49) SIGRTMIN+15	50) SIGRTMAX-14	51) SIGRTMAX-13	52) SIGRTMAX-12
53) SIGRTMAX-11	54) SIGRTMAX-10	55) SIGRTMAX-9	56) SIGRTMAX-8	57) SIGRTMAX-7
58) SIGRTMAX-6	59) SIGRTMAX-5	60) SIGRTMAX-4	61) SIGRTMAX-3	62) SIGRTMAX-2
63) SIGRTMAX-1	64) SIGRTMAX

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