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All about Linux signals

Submitted by daper on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 00:33

In most cases if you want to handle a signal in your application you write a simple signal handler like:

void handler (int sig)

and use the signal(2) system function to run it when a signal is delivered to the process. This is the simplest case, but signals are more interesting than that! Information contained in this article is useful for example when you are writing a daemon and must handle interrupting your program properly without interrupting the current operation or the whole program.

Comments

Thanks

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 08:09.
I just want to say thank you , I was googling about what happens to signals handlers when I fork() and you blog showed up. thanks

Ctrl+Z Signal

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 08:16.
CTRL-Z - sends SIGTSTP

Hi, typo jerk here

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 16:51.
Hi, typo jerk here again: page3: Moreover, it lack's features -> lacks why the signal was send -> sent page5: signals like SIGPIPE, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR1 -> SIGUSR2 signal i exits -> it This program read from it's -> reads, its Additionally when SIGUSR1 -> Additionally, when [missing comma] I hope you really, truly don't consider this as some kind of personal attack.

Thanks. I don't consider it

Submitted by daper on Sun, 11/29/2009 - 18:29.
Thanks. I don't consider it as an attack :) Some of them are just caused by the fact that English is not my native language.

I was looking for linux

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 08/27/2009 - 01:27.
I was looking for linux programming tutorial and i found this blog . keep good work.

Great write-up

Submitted by mattismyname (not verified) on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 17:22.
Great write-up; thanks for the information.

Signals - That's not everything

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 15:39.
I wouls suggest the reading of "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment". It does not address signals with threads, but it is the most extensive explanation of signal handling. It treats also long jumps to remove races in signal handling.

Problem regarding signals.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/01/2011 - 08:38.
Hi I have written a sample program to understand signal handling. signal1.c 
#include 
#include 
/* for random() stuff */
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

void
termination_handler (int signum)
{
  struct temp_file *p;
 int err;
  printf("\nTerminated\n");
		sleep(10); 
}

int
main (void)
{

	int shmfd,*shared_msg, pid;
	struct sigaction new_action, old_action;
	int shared_seg_size = (1 * sizeof(int));
	//shm operations
	shmfd = shm_open("/shm_sumit",O_CREAT|O_RDWR|O_EXCL,S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG);
	if (shmfd < 0) {
	        perror("In shm_open()");
        	exit(1);
    	}

	ftruncate(shmfd, shared_seg_size);
	shared_msg = (int *)mmap(NULL, shared_seg_size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, shmfd, 0);
	if (shared_msg == NULL) {
	        perror("In mmap()");
        	exit(1);
    	}

        pid = getpid();
        *shared_msg = pid; 

  /* Set up the structure to specify the new action. */
  new_action.sa_handler = termination_handler;
  sigemptyset (&new_action.sa_mask);
  new_action.sa_flags = SA_NODEFER;

    sigaction (SIGUSR1, &new_action, NULL);
     //while(1)
{
   sleep(10);
}
	/*if (shm_unlink("/shm_sumit") != 0) {
	        perror("In shm_unlink()");
        	exit(1);
    	}*/

}



signal2.c


#include 
#include 
#include 
void
termination_handler (int signum)
{
  struct temp_file *p;
  printf("\nTerminated");
}

int
main (void)
{
	int shmfd,*shared_msg, pid;
    struct sigaction new_action, old_action;
    int shared_seg_size = (1 * sizeof(int));
    //shm operations
    shmfd = shm_open("/shm_sumit",O_RDWR,S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG);
    shared_msg = (int *)mmap(NULL, shared_seg_size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, shmfd, 0);
    printf(" Process id of sigtest1 = %d\n",*shared_msg);
 kill(*shared_msg,SIGUSR1);
 kill(*shared_msg,SIGUSR1);
 kill(*shared_msg,SIGUSR1);
 kill(*shared_msg,SIGUSR1);
 kill(*shared_msg,SIGUSR1);
	
	sleep(1);
	if (shm_unlink("/shm_sumit") != 0) {
        perror("In shm_unlink()");
        exit(1);
    }

}
here sigtest2.c send SIGUSR1 to sigtest1.c 5 times, but the string "Terminated " gets printed sometimes 2 times and sometimes 5 times. why is this printing behavior inconsistent??

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