First the signals described in the original POSIX.1-1990 standard. Signal Value Action Comment ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── SIGHUP 1 Term Hangup detected on controlling terminal or death of controlling process SIGINT 2 Term Interrupt from keyboard SIGQUIT 3 Core Quit from keyboard SIGILL 4 Core Illegal Instruction SIGABRT 6 Core Abort signal from abort(3) SIGFPE 8 Core Floating point exception SIGKILL 9 Term Kill signal SIGSEGV 11 Core Invalid memory reference SIGPIPE 13 Term Broken pipe: write to pipe with no readers SIGALRM 14 Term Timer signal from alarm(2) SIGTERM 15 Term Termination signal SIGUSR1 30,10,16 Term User-defined signal 1 SIGUSR2 31,12,17 Term User-defined signal 2 SIGCHLD 20,17,18 Ign Child stopped or terminated SIGCONT 19,18,25 Cont Continue if stopped SIGSTOP 17,19,23 Stop Stop process SIGTSTP 18,20,24 Stop Stop typed at terminal SIGTTIN 21,21,26 Stop Terminal input for background process SIGTTOU 22,22,27 Stop Terminal output for background process The signals SIGKILL and SIGSTOP cannot be caught, blocked, or ignored. Next the signals not in the POSIX.1-1990 standard but described in SUSv2 and POSIX.1-2001. Signal Value Action Comment ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── SIGBUS 10,7,10 Core Bus error (bad memory access) SIGPOLL Term Pollable event (Sys V). Synonym for SIGIO SIGPROF 27,27,29 Term Profiling timer expired SIGSYS 12,31,12 Core Bad argument to routine (SVr4) SIGTRAP 5 Core Trace/breakpoint trap SIGURG 16,23,21 Ign Urgent condition on socket (4.2BSD) SIGVTALRM 26,26,28 Term Virtual alarm clock (4.2BSD) SIGXCPU 24,24,30 Core CPU time limit exceeded (4.2BSD) SIGXFSZ 25,25,31 Core File size limit exceeded (4.2BSD) Up to and including Linux 2.2, the default behavior for SIGSYS, SIGX‐ CPU, SIGXFSZ, and (on architectures other than SPARC and MIPS) SIGBUS was to terminate the process (without a core dump). (On some other UNIX systems the default action for SIGXCPU and SIGXFSZ is to terminate the process without a core dump.) Linux 2.4 conforms to the POSIX.1-2001 requirements for these signals, terminating the process with a core dump. Next various other signals. Signal Value Action Comment ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── SIGIOT 6 Core IOT trap. A synonym for SIGABRT SIGEMT 7,-,7 Term SIGSTKFLT -,16,- Term Stack fault on coprocessor (unused) SIGIO 23,29,22 Term I/O now possible (4.2BSD) SIGCLD -,-,18 Ign A synonym for SIGCHLD SIGPWR 29,30,19 Term Power failure (System V) SIGINFO 29,-,- A synonym for SIGPWR SIGLOST -,-,- Term File lock lost (unused) SIGWINCH 28,28,20 Ign Window resize signal (4.3BSD, Sun) SIGUNUSED -,31,- Core Synonymous with SIGSYS (Signal 29 is SIGINFO / SIGPWR on an alpha but SIGLOST on a sparc.) SIGEMT is not specified in POSIX.1-2001, but nevertheless appears on most other UNIX systems, where its default action is typically to ter‐ minate the process with a core dump. SIGPWR (which is not specified in POSIX.1-2001) is typically ignored by default on those other UNIX systems where it appears. SIGIO (which is not specified in POSIX.1-2001) is ignored by default on several other UNIX systems. Where defined, SIGUNUSED is synonymous with SIGSYS on most architec‐ tures.