What does sendsignal.exe do?

I hear that sendsignal.exe is used to write logs of java applications to a file. Would you please give more information about what it does and how it does it? In plain english please, I'm not an expert programmer.

And what is "CTRL+break"? I don't see a "break" button on my keyboard.

1 Answer

Singals are a Unix concept, they are some kind of limited interprocess communication.

To create a thread dump you send the signal SIGQUIT to a process, the signal is trapped and the thread dump will be written. You could also send other signals e.g. to terminate a process.

To send a signal on unix you would use the kill command:

kill -3 <pid> 

the java way would be:

jstack <pid> 

your sendsignal.exe will probably do the same.