| Description | Virtual alarm clock (4.2BSD) |
|---|---|
| Default action | Abnormal termination of the process |
| SA_SIGINFO macros | |
|
None |
|
On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGVTALRM is the signal sent to a process when a time limit has elapsed. In source code, SIGVTALRM is a symbolic constant defined in the header file signal.h. Symbolic signal names are used because signal numbers can vary across platforms.
SIG is a common prefix for signal names. VTALRM is an abbreviation for virtual alarm.
SIGVTALRM is sent when a timer expires, like SIGPROF and the more popular SIGALRM. The distinction of SIGVTALRM is that its timer counts only time spent executing the process itself; SIGPROF measures time spent by the process and by the system executing on behalf of the process, while SIGALRM measures real time. It is suggested that SIGPROF be used with SIGVTALRM to profile the time spent by the process in user space and kernel space.
|
||||||||