System MonitoringLesson 29Free preview

Bash Terminate (kill)

This lesson is part of Bash · All levels

Summary

The kill command sends a signal to the process based on its PID, usually to stop the program. The built-in signal is the TERM that allows the process to clear itself, whereas KILL forces the process to die instantly. Use negative 9 only when the process doesn't respond to the usual signal.

Key points

kill PID sends a TERM signal (15) by default
kill -9 forces the process to die instantly.
Take the PID from the pgrep or ps aux
kill -l is displaying a list of signals

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