SIGKILL (signal 9) is a signal used to forcefully terminate a process immediately. Unlike SIGTERM, which requests a graceful shutdown, SIGKILL does not allow the process to clean up resources or perform any shutdown operations. This means that using SIGKILL can lead to:
- Incomplete cleanup of resources.
- Potentially leaving resources in an inconsistent state.
- Possible data loss if the process was in the middle of writing data.
SIGKILL should be used as a last resort when a process does not respond to SIGTERM.
