From man core(5):
You can send a process (via the kill command) any of the signals whose corresponding action is "core" listed in that man page. This includes:
SIGQUIT, SIGILL, SIGABRT, SIGFPE, SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, SIGSYS, SIGTRAP, SIGXCPU, SIGXFSZ, SIGIOT,
The catch is that (1) a process can choose to ignore these signals or handle them without doing a core dump, and (2) the parent shell can limit the core dump through ulimit or other commands.
Quote:
Up to and including Linux 2.2, the default behaviour for SIGSYS, SIGXCPU, SIGXFSZ, and (on architectures other than SPARC and MIPS) SIGBUS was to terminate the process (without a core dump). (On some other Unices the default action for SIGXCPU and SIGXFSZ is to terminate the process without a core dump.) Linux 2.4 conforms to the POSIX.1-2001 requirements for these signals, terminating the process with a core dump.
