How to enable sending keyboard signals while in SSH?

Question

When I use a keyboard plugged into the pi directly, I can send signals using ctrl+T / ^T to get messages from ongoing commands in terminal.

When I'm logged in via SSH on my mac, I seem to lose this functionality, because ctrl+T simply prints ^T without any of the goodies.

I'm aware there's a difference between mac/BSD and Linux keybindings. I'm told that on Linux, the equivalent is sending SIGUSR1. However, when I've got a long running command on the Pi and in a separate window I do

kill -s SIGUSR1 <pid>

I don't get the goodies I want. Is there a way I can get the goodies from sending ^T on mac but on the Pi and other Linux distros?

Answer 1

The signal SIGUSR1 is not among the signals that can be generated by the keyboard. For the signals that can be generated, see the manual page of stty or the output of stty -a.

That means that the signal is generated by the particular terminal emulator and sent to the program.

If you don't get the expected output from sending SIGUSR1, then the program probably doesn't react to that signal in the way you expect. Maybe you should verify that it is actually SIGUSR1 that causes the effect you want to achieve.