Signal (computing)
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Signal (computing)
Signals are standardized messages sent to a running program to trigger specific behavior, such as quitting or error handling. They 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 to notify it of an event. Common uses of signals are to interrupt, suspend, terminate or kill a process. Signals originated in 1970s Bell Labs Unix and were later 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 inter-process communications, as signals are n ...
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Computer Program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. ( Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter. If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction. If the source code is requested for execution, ...
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SIGSEGV
In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault) or access violation is a fault, or failure condition, raised by hardware with memory protection, notifying an operating system (OS) the software has attempted to access a restricted area of memory (a memory access violation). On standard x86 computers, this is a form of general protection fault. The operating system kernel will, in response, usually perform some corrective action, generally passing the fault on to the offending process by sending the process a signal. Processes can in some cases install a custom signal handler, allowing them to recover on their own,''Expert C programming: deep C secrets'' By Peter Van der Linden, page 188 but otherwise the OS default signal handler is used, generally causing abnormal termination of the process (a program crash), and sometimes a core dump. Segmentation faults are a common class of error in programs written in languages like C that provide low-level memory access and ...
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Division By Zero
In mathematics, division by zero is division (mathematics), division where the divisor (denominator) is 0, zero. Such a division can be formally expression (mathematics), expressed as \tfrac, where is the dividend (numerator). In ordinary arithmetic, the expression has no meaning, as there is no number that, when multiplied by , gives (assuming a \neq 0); thus, division by zero is undefined (mathematics), undefined. Since any number multiplied by zero is zero, the expression 0/0, \tfrac is also undefined; when it is the form of a limit (mathematics), limit, it is an Indeterminate form#Indeterminate form 0/0, indeterminate form. Historically, one of the earliest recorded references to the mathematical impossibility of assigning a value to \tfrac is contained in Anglo-Irish people, Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley's criticism of infinitesimal calculus in 1734 in ''The Analyst'' ("ghosts of departed quantities"). There are mathematical structures in which \tfrac is define ...
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Exception Handling
In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an exception breaks the normal flow of execution and executes a pre-registered ''exception handler''; the details of how this is done depend on whether it is a hardware or software exception and how the software exception is implemented. Exception handling, if provided, is facilitated by specialized programming language constructs, hardware mechanisms like interrupts, or operating system (OS) inter-process communication (IPC) facilities like signals. Some exceptions, especially hardware ones, may be handled so gracefully that execution can resume where it was interrupted. Definition The definition of an exception is based on the observation that each procedure has a precondition, a set of circumstances for which it will terminate "normal ...
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Kill (command)
In computing, kill is a command that is used in several popular operating systems to send signals to running processes. Implementations Unix and Unix-like In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, kill is a command used to send a signal to a process. By default, the message sent is the termination signal, which requests that the process exit. But ''kill'' is something of a misnomer; the signal sent may have nothing to do with process killing. The kill command is a wrapper around the kill() system call, which sends signals to processes or process groups on the system, referenced by their numeric process IDs (PIDs) or process group IDs (PGIDs). kill is always provided as a standalone utility as defined by the POSIX standard. However, most shells have built-in kill commands that may slightly differ from it. There are many different signals that can be sent (see ''signal'' for a full list), although the signals in which users are generally most interested are SIGTERM ("termina ...
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Plan 9 From Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system which originated from the Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s and built on UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. Since 2000, Plan 9 has been free and open-source. The final official release was in early 2015. Under Plan 9, UNIX's ''everything is a file'' metaphor is extended via a pervasive network-centric filesystem, and the cursor-addressed, terminal-based I/O at the heart of UNIX-like operating systems is replaced by a windowing system and graphical user interface without cursor addressing, although rc, the Plan 9 shell, is text-based. The name ''Plan 9 from Bell Labs'' is a reference to the Ed Wood 1957 cult science fiction Z-movie '' Plan 9 from Outer Space''. The system continues to be used and developed by operating system researchers and hobbyists. History Plan 9 from Bell Labs was originally developed, starting in the late 1980s, by members of the Computing ...
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Version 5 Unix
The term "Research Unix" refers to early versions of the Unix operating system for PDP-7, DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC). History The term ''Research Unix'' first appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal (Vol. 57, No. 6, Pt. 2 Jul/Aug 1978) to distinguish it from other versions internal to Bell Labs (such as PWB/UNIX and Multi-Environment Real-Time, MERT) whose code-base had diverged from the primary CSRC version. However, that term was little-used until Version 8 Unix, but has been Retroactive continuity, retroactively applied to earlier versions as well. Prior to V8, the operating system was most commonly called simply UNIX (in caps) or the UNIX Time-Sharing System. AT&T licensed Version 5 to educational institutions, and Version 6 also to commercial sites. Schools paid $200 and others $20,000, discouraging most commercial use, but Version 6 was the most widely used versio ...
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Version 2 Unix
The term "Research Unix" refers to early versions of the Unix operating system for PDP-7, DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC). History The term ''Research Unix'' first appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal (Vol. 57, No. 6, Pt. 2 Jul/Aug 1978) to distinguish it from other versions internal to Bell Labs (such as PWB/UNIX and Multi-Environment Real-Time, MERT) whose code-base had diverged from the primary CSRC version. However, that term was little-used until Version 8 Unix, but has been Retroactive continuity, retroactively applied to earlier versions as well. Prior to V8, the operating system was most commonly called simply UNIX (in caps) or the UNIX Time-Sharing System. AT&T licensed Version 5 to educational institutions, and Version 6 also to commercial sites. Schools paid $200 and others $20,000, discouraging most commercial use, but Version 6 was the most widely used versio ...
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Version 7 Unix
Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. V7, released in 1979, was the last Bell Laboratories release to see widespread distribution before the commercialization of Unix by AT&T Corporation in the early 1980s. V7 was originally developed for Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11 minicomputers and was later ported to other platforms. Overview Unix versions from Bell Labs were designated by the edition of the user's manual with which they were accompanied. Released in 1979, the Seventh Edition was preceded by Sixth Edition, which was the first version licensed to commercial users. Development of the Research Unix line continued with the Eighth Edition, which incorporated development from 4.1BSD, through the Tenth Edition, after which the Bell Labs researchers concentrated on developing Plan 9. V7 was the first readily portable version of Unix. As this was the era of minicomputers, with ...
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Version 4 Unix
The term "Research Unix" refers to early versions of the Unix operating system for PDP-7, DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC). History The term ''Research Unix'' first appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal (Vol. 57, No. 6, Pt. 2 Jul/Aug 1978) to distinguish it from other versions internal to Bell Labs (such as PWB/UNIX and Multi-Environment Real-Time, MERT) whose code-base had diverged from the primary CSRC version. However, that term was little-used until Version 8 Unix, but has been Retroactive continuity, retroactively applied to earlier versions as well. Prior to V8, the operating system was most commonly called simply UNIX (in caps) or the UNIX Time-Sharing System. AT&T licensed Version 5 to educational institutions, and Version 6 also to commercial sites. Schools paid $200 and others $20,000, discouraging most commercial use, but Version 6 was the most widely used versio ...
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System Call
In computing, a system call (commonly abbreviated to syscall) is the programmatic way in which a computer program requests a service from the operating system on which it is executed. This may include hardware-related services (for example, accessing a hard disk drive or accessing the device's camera), creation and execution of new processes, and communication with integral kernel services such as process scheduling. System calls provide an essential interface between a process and the operating system. In most systems, system calls can only be made from userspace processes, while in some systems, OS/360 and successors for example, privileged system code also issues system calls. Privileges The architecture of most modern processors, with the exception of some embedded systems, involves a security model. For example, the ''rings'' model specifies multiple privilege levels under which software may be executed: a program is usually limited to its own address space so that ...
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Version 1 Unix
The term "Research Unix" refers to early versions of the Unix operating system for DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC). History The term ''Research Unix'' first appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal (Vol. 57, No. 6, Pt. 2 Jul/Aug 1978) to distinguish it from other versions internal to Bell Labs (such as PWB/UNIX and MERT) whose code-base had diverged from the primary CSRC version. However, that term was little-used until Version 8 Unix, but has been retroactively applied to earlier versions as well. Prior to V8, the operating system was most commonly called simply UNIX (in caps) or the UNIX Time-Sharing System. AT&T licensed Version 5 to educational institutions, and Version 6 also to commercial sites. Schools paid $200 and others $20,000, discouraging most commercial use, but Version 6 was the most widely used version into the 1980s. Research Unix versions are often referr ...
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