Should I use SIGINT or SIGTERM?

Should I use SIGINT or SIGTERM?

SIGTERM is the preferred way as the process has the chance to terminate gracefully. As a process can override the default action for SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGQUIT, it can be the case that neither of them finishes the process.

What sends SIGTERM signal?

It is the normal way to politely ask a program to terminate. The shell command kill generates SIGTERM by default. The SIGINT (“program interrupt”) signal is sent when the user types the INTR character (normally C-c ). See Special Characters, for information about terminal driver support for C-c .

What happens when a process receives SIGTERM?

If a process receives SIGTERM, some other process sent that signal. SIGTERM is the signal that is typically used to administratively terminate a process. That’s not a signal that the kernel would send, but that’s the signal a process would typically send to terminate (gracefully) another process.

Can you catch SIGTERM?

The SIGKILL or SIGSTOP signals cannot be caught or ignored. You can catch a signal in Linux by using sigaction . Use only functions that are async-signal-safe in the signal handler.

What is SIGTERM?

SIGTERM. (signal 15) is a request to the program to terminate. If the program has a signal handler for SIGTERM that does not actually terminate the application, this kill may have no effect. This is the default signal sent by kill.

What is the difference between SIGTERM and SIGQUIT?

SIGTERM is the default signal when we use the kill command. The default action of both signals is to terminate the process. However, SIGQUIT also generates a core dump before exiting. When we send SIGTERM, the process sometimes executes a clean-up routine before exiting.

What is the purpose of SIGINT?

As SIGINT is intended as a signal sent by the user, usually the processes communicate with each other using other signals. For instance, a parent process usually sends SIGTERM to its children to terminate them, even if SIGINT has the same effect.

What is the purpose of SIGHUP?

SIGHUP, as you say, is intended to indicate that the terminal connection has been lost, rather than to be a termination signal as such. But, again, the default action for SIGHUP (if the process does not catch or ignore it) is to terminate the process in the same way as SIGTERM etc..

What is the most common type of SIGTERM signal?

For example, the SIGTERM signal matches with number 15, and signal 9 ( SIGKILL) is likely the most the most known one as it allows one to forcefully terminate a process, unlike our SIGTERM red light example.