my-docs/Linux/Basic Administration/17-kill.md

🗡️ Kill Command

The kill command is used to send signals to processes, typically to terminate or control them.

kill [options] <PID>

📌 Replace <PID> with the Process ID of the target process.

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🚦 Common kill Usage Examples

💤 Graceful Termination — SIGTERM (Signal 15)

kill 123

✅ Politely asks the process to terminate. Allows the process to clean up before exiting.

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🪓 Force Kill — SIGKILL (Signal 9)

kill -9 123

💥 Immediate termination. Doesn’t allow cleanup — use only when necessary. 🗡️ Think of it as the "katana" of kill commands.

📑 Multi Process Kill

pidof <ps-name> | xargs kill -9 

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⌨️ Interrupt — SIGINT (Signal 2)

kill -2 123

🛑 Mimics pressing Ctrl + C. Often used to stop processes gracefully from the terminal.

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🔄 Hangup — SIGHUP (Signal 1)

kill -1 123

♻️ Requests the process to reload or restart. Commonly used for daemons or services to reload configs.

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📋 Summary of Signals

Signal	Name	Description
1	SIGHUP	Reload configuration / restart
2	SIGINT	Interrupt (like Ctrl + C)
9	SIGKILL	Force kill (cannot be ignored)
15	SIGTERM	Graceful termination (default)