Which signal is defined to stop a process execution temporarily?

The signal that is specifically defined to stop a process execution temporarily is sigstop. This signal immediately stops a process and puts it in a suspended state, allowing it to be resumed later. This is particularly useful in scenarios where you need to pause a process for debugging or managing system resources without terminating it entirely.

When a process receives the sigstop signal, it cannot be caught or ignored, meaning that the operating system ensures that the process is definitely paused. This behavior distinguishes sigstop from other signals, such as sigterm and sigkill, which are used to terminate processes completely rather than pausing them.

In contrast, sighup is commonly used to indicate that a terminal connection has been lost, and it may cause a process to terminate or reload its configuration. Sigterm is a request to terminate the process gracefully, allowing it to clean up resources before exiting, while sigkill immediately terminates a process without allowing it to perform any cleanup. Thus, none of these signals serve the specific purpose of temporarily halting a process like sigstop does.