Controlling and terminating processes using signals

Now that we know a bit more about processes, it's time to move on to signals and learn how we can kill and control a process using signals. In this recipe, we will also write our first C program, which will have a signal handler.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you'll only need what's listed in the Technical requirements section of this chapter.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we'll explore how to control and terminate processes with signals. Let's get started:

1. Let's start by listing the signals we can send to a process using the kill command. The list you get from this command is rather long, so it's not been included here. The most interesting—and used—signals are the first 31:

   $> kill -L

2. Let's see how some of these signals work. We can send the STOP signal (number 19) to a process, which has the same effect as we saw when hitting Ctrl+Z in sleep...