XK0-004 · Question #332
A systems administrator is editing a service file for the web server. In order to continue testing, all web server processes must be shut down. The administrator accomplishes this with the following c
The correct answer is D. The -15 signal gracefully kills the process and all Its parent and child processes.. SIGTERM (-15) is the graceful termination signal that allows a process to clean up and shut down its entire process group, including child workers.
Question
A systems administrator is editing a service file for the web server. In order to continue testing, all web server processes must be shut down. The administrator accomplishes this with the following commands:
Based on the command output above, which of the following BEST explains how this was accomplished?
Exhibit
Options
- AKilling the parent process with -15 gives it a chance to kill all of the child processes.
- BThe -15 signal will allow the kill command to automatically seek out all child processes and kill
- CThe -15 signal tells the command to kill all processes matching the Apache string.
- DThe -15 signal gracefully kills the process and all Its parent and child processes.
How the community answered
(61 responses)- A15% (9)
- B5% (3)
- C8% (5)
- D72% (44)
Why each option
SIGTERM (-15) is the graceful termination signal that allows a process to clean up and shut down its entire process group, including child workers.
The phrasing is misleading - SIGTERM does not give the kill command a special ability; rather, the parent process itself decides to terminate its children as part of its own graceful shutdown handler.
The kill command with -15 sends SIGTERM only to the explicitly specified PID and does not automatically seek or enumerate child processes - that responsibility belongs to the parent process's signal handler.
Signal -15 is the SIGTERM signal number and is unrelated to name-based pattern matching; tools like killall or pkill are required to target processes by name.
Sending signal -15 (SIGTERM) to a parent server process like Apache instructs it to terminate gracefully - the parent process handles its own cleanup and signals all child worker processes to exit as well, resulting in a complete, orderly shutdown of every process in that service tree.
Concept tested: SIGTERM graceful process and child termination
Source: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal.7.html
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