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Unix / Linux - Signals and Traps

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about Signals and Traps in Unix.

Signals are software interrupts sent to a program to indicate that an important event has
occurred. The events can vary from user requests to illegal memory access errors. Some
signals, such as the interrupt signal, indicate that a user has asked the program to do
something that is not in the usual flow of control.

The following table lists out common signals you might encounter and want to use in your
programs −

Signal
Signal Name Description
Number

Hang up detected on controlling terminal or death of controlling

SIGHUP 1
process

SIGINT 2 Issued if the user sends an interrupt signal (Ctrl + C)

SIGQUIT 3 Issued if the user sends a quit signal (Ctrl + D)

SIGFPE 8 Issued if an illegal mathematical operation is attempted

If a process gets this signal it must quit immediately and will not
SIGKILL 9
perform any clean-up operations

SIGALRM 14 Alarm clock signal (used for timers)

SIGTERM 15 Software termination signal (sent by kill by default)

List of Signals
There is an easy way to list down all the signals supported by your system. Just issue the
kill -l command and it would display all the supported signals −

$ 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

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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

The actual list of signals varies between Solaris, HP-UX, and Linux.

Default Actions
Every signal has a default action associated with it. The default action for a signal is the
action that a script or program performs when it receives a signal.

Some of the possible default actions are −

Terminate the process.

Ignore the signal.

Dump core. This creates a file called core containing the memory image of the
process when it received the signal.

Stop the process.

Continue a stopped process.

Sending Signals
There are several methods of delivering signals to a program or script. One of the most
common is for a user to type CONTROL-C or the INTERRUPT key while a script is
executing.

When you press the Ctrl+C key, a SIGINT is sent to the script and as per defined default
action script terminates.

The other common method for delivering signals is to use the kill command, the syntax of
which is as follows −

$ kill -signal pid

Here signal is either the number or name of the signal to deliver and pid is the process ID
that the signal should be sent to. For Example −

$ kill -1 1001

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The above command sends the HUP or hang-up signal to the program that is running with
process ID 1001. To send a kill signal to the same process, use the following command −

$ kill -9 1001

This kills the process running with process ID 1001.

Trapping Signals
When you press the Ctrl+C or Break key at your terminal during execution of a shell
program, normally that program is immediately terminated, and your command prompt
returns. This may not always be desirable. For instance, you may end up leaving a bunch of
temporary files that won't get cleaned up.

Trapping these signals is quite easy, and the trap command has the following syntax −

$ trap commands signals

Here command can be any valid Unix command, or even a user-defined function, and signal
can be a list of any number of signals you want to trap.

There are two common uses for trap in shell scripts −

Clean up temporary files
Ignore signals

Cleaning Up Temporary Files

As an example of the trap command, the following shows how you can remove some files
and then exit if someone tries to abort the program from the terminal −

$ trap "rm -f $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit" 2

From the point in the shell program that this trap is executed, the two files work1$$ and
dataout$$ will be automatically removed if signal number 2 is received by the program.

Hence, if the user interrupts the execution of the program after this trap is executed, you can
be assured that these two files will be cleaned up. The exit command that follows the rm is
necessary because without it, the execution would continue in the program at the point that
it left off when the signal was received.

Signal number 1 is generated for hangup. Either someone intentionally hangs up the line or
the line gets accidentally disconnected.

You can modify the preceding trap to also remove the two specified files in this case by
adding signal number 1 to the list of signals −

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$ trap "rm $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit" 1 2

Now these files will be removed if the line gets hung up or if the Ctrl+C key gets pressed.

The commands specified to trap must be enclosed in quotes, if they contain more than one
command. Also note that the shell scans the command line at the time that the trap
command gets executed and also when one of the listed signals is received.

Thus, in the preceding example, the value of WORKDIR and $$ will be substituted at the
time that the trap command is executed. If you wanted this substitution to occur at the time
that either signal 1 or 2 was received, you can put the commands inside single quotes −

$ trap 'rm $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit' 1 2

Ignoring Signals
If the command listed for trap is null, the specified signal will be ignored when received. For
example, the command −

$ trap '' 2

This specifies that the interrupt signal is to be ignored. You might want to ignore certain
signals when performing an operation that you don't want to be interrupted. You can specify
multiple signals to be ignored as follows −

$ trap '' 1 2 3 15

Note that the first argument must be specified for a signal to be ignored and is not
equivalent to writing the following, which has a separate meaning of its own −

$ trap 2

If you ignore a signal, all subshells also ignore that signal. However, if you specify an action
to be taken on the receipt of a signal, all subshells will still take the default action on receipt
of that signal.

Resetting Traps
After you've changed the default action to be taken on receipt of a signal, you can change it
back again with the trap if you simply omit the first argument; so −

$ trap 1 2

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This resets the action to be taken on the receipt of signals 1 or 2 back to the default.

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