This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the unix category.
Last Updated: 2024-04-19
The default behavior of SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGQUIT and SIGHUP, SIGKILL is to kill the program. However applications are allowed to install a handler for these signals.
In a sense, signals other than KILL exist to give processes a chance to react to the signal.
The INT (interrupt) signal is the weakest. It is the signal number 2. Its
meaning is "stop what you're doing right now and wait for further
user input". It's the signal generated by Ctrl+C in a terminal
The TERM (terminate) signal is the default kill signal (i.e. the one sent when
you just call kill). It is signal number 15. It tells the application to exit
cleanly. This signal allows for a trap handler, which enables the receiving
process to do some clean up in an orderly fashion. An application that doesn't
want to be interrupted during a critical operation might ignore SIGTERM for a
while.
The HUP signal (hang up) is about the same as SIGTERM in terms of harshness,
but it has a specific role because it's automatically sent to applications
running in a terminal when the user disconnects from that terminal. It is
signal number 1.
The QUIT signal is the harshest of the ignorable signals. It's meant to be used when an
application is misbehaving and needs to be killed now, and by default it
traditionally left a core dump file. It is signal number 3.
The KILL signal does not have ANY possibility of being resisted. It always
works because a KILL signal cannot be handled with a trap. This is both its blessing and
its curse. It is signal number 9.
$ kill -l
HUP INT QUIT ILL TRAP ABRT EMT FPE KILL BUS SEGV SYS PIPE ALRM TERM URG STOP TSTP CONT CHLD TTIN TTOU IO XCPU XFSZ VTALRM PROF WINCH INFO USR1 USR2