From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 13 12:38:51 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A745737B400 for ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 12:38:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cactus.fi.uba.ar (cactus.fi.uba.ar [157.92.49.108]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 938ED43E4A for ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 12:38:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from fgleiser@cactus.fi.uba.ar) Received: from cactus.fi.uba.ar (cactus.fi.uba.ar [157.92.49.108]) by cactus.fi.uba.ar (8.12.3/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g8DJaBFK098720; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 16:36:11 -0300 (ART) (envelope-from fgleiser@cactus.fi.uba.ar) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 16:36:11 -0300 (ART) From: Fernando Gleiser To: Peter Leftwich Cc: FreeBSD LIST Subject: Re: kill(1) In-Reply-To: <20020913125700.P16109-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> Message-ID: <20020913162819.Y2575-100000@cactus.fi.uba.ar> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Peter Leftwich wrote: > Uh oh. I never read the kill manpage. I've been using an alias of kill > which always runs "kill -9" -- is that bad? Is there a default value sent Yes. Using always 'kill -9' is bad, mmmmkay? SIGKILL (9) can't be traped or ignored so the process "just dies". It is intended as a last-resort by the sysadmin, to kill a runaway process, but you have to give the process a chance to say its pray^W^W^W do the proper cleanup before terminating. If you kill -9 a process, it won't clean up and you'll get stale lock files, undeleted temp files and other nasties lurking around. Read the chapter on signals on any decent book on Unix programming for a more detailed explanation of why kill -9 is the last resort. > to the signal, if kill has no flag? e.g. `kill 2445345` vs `kill -9 244534` by default, kill(1) sends a SIGTERM to the process. So kill and kill -15 and kill -TERM are all the same. Hope his helps Fer > > -- > Peter Leftwich > President & Founder > Video2Video Services > Box 13692, La Jolla, CA, 92039 USA > +1-413-403-9555 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message