this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Isn't that what
SIGTERMis? A request to gracefully shutdown processes.kill, and I swear to god if you're still there when Ips, I'm getting out the-9Yeah, by default
killsends sigterm, and not kill the process at all.It's the correct behavior, sending sigkill by default would be harmful. Now take a look at how
killallworked in Solaris (before it adopted GNU).https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4
Okay that took me by surprise
I'll be sharing this
Please do!
Systemd waits until the services terminate before shutting down
killall -9I bet the GUI environments also have their own mechanisms to indicate that the app needs to close, before whipping out the signals.
How’s that differ from
SIGHUP?Historical context, delivery, and handling.
HUP—hang up—is sent to indicate the TTY is closed.
TERM—terminate— is sent by request.
What happens when received is usually up to the process. Most of them just leave the defaults, which is to exit.
They’re different signals. The default handling is the same - terminate - but they’re triggered by different things and (if the process handles them) handled by separate handlers.