In what cases should the SIGKILL command be used to terminate a process?

The SIGKILL command (signal 9) is used for immediate and forceful termination of a process. Unlike SIGTERM, which sends a request for proper termination, SIGKILL cannot be caught or ignored by the process.

SIGKILL should be used in the following cases:

• The process does not respond to softer signals (e.g., SIGTERM).
• The process is hung or in a state where it cannot terminate properly.
• It is necessary to urgently free resources occupied by the process.

It is important to remember that when using SIGKILL, the process will not be able to perform cleanup, close files, or save its state, so it should only be used when other methods have failed.