Killing a job

The foreground process can be terminated with the SIGINT signal using Ctrl Z. In order to kill a background process, or send any signal to the process, the kill command can be used

The kill command receives an argument that can be either of the following:

  • The signal sent to the process
  • The PID or the job number (with a % prefix)

The more notable signals used are as follows:

  • SIGINT: Indicates a termination caused by user input and can be sent by kill command with the -2 value
  • SIGTERM: Represents a general purpose termination request not generated by a user as well as a default signal for the kill command with a  -6 value
  • SIGKILL: A termination handled directly by the operating system that kills the process immediately and has a -9 value