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Commonly confused · Systems & Data Center

SIGTERM vs SIGKILL: What's the Difference?

SIGTERM politely asks a process to terminate, letting it catch the signal, clean up, and exit gracefully. SIGKILL forces the kernel to end the process immediately; it cannot be caught, blocked, or ignored, so no cleanup happens.

SIGTERM (15)

vs

SIGKILL (9)

SIGTERMSIGKILL
Signal number159
Can be caught or ignoredYesNo
CleanupProcess can save state, close files, remove locksNone
Default for killYes (kill PID)No (kill -9 PID)
Use whenNormal shutdown of a processProcess is hung and ignores SIGTERM
RisksProcess may not exitData corruption, leftover locks or temp files
Remember it

SIGTERM says please; SIGKILL doesn't ask.

Exam tip

Know the signal numbers, that plain kill sends SIGTERM, and best practice to try SIGTERM before SIGKILL. SIGHUP (1) to reload configuration and SIGINT (2, Ctrl+C) are common distractors.

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