Signals are short messages delivered to a process or a process group. The kernel uses signals to notify processes about the occurrence of a system event; signals are also used for communication between processes. Linux categorizes signals into two groups, namely general-purpose POSIX (classic Unix signals) and real-time signals. Each group consists of 32 distinct signals, identified by a unique ID:

#define _NSIG 64
#define _NSIG_BPW __BITS_PER_LONG
#define _NSIG_WORDS (_NSIG / _NSIG_BPW)

#define SIGHUP 1
#define SIGINT 2
#define SIGQUIT 3
#define SIGILL 4
#define SIGTRAP 5
#define SIGABRT 6
#define SIGIOT 6
#define SIGBUS 7
#define SIGFPE 8
#define SIGKILL 9
#define SIGUSR1 10
#define SIGSEGV 11
#define SIGUSR2 12
#define SIGPIPE 13
#define SIGALRM 14
#define SIGTERM 15
#define SIGSTKFLT 16
#define SIGCHLD 17
#define SIGCONT 18
#define SIGSTOP 19
#define SIGTSTP 20
#define SIGTTIN 21
#define SIGTTOU 22
#define SIGURG 23
#define SIGXCPU 24
#define SIGXFSZ 25
#define SIGVTALRM 26
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