XK0-006 System Management Practice Question
A system administrator notices that a process with PID 1234 is consuming excessive CPU. The administrator wants to terminate this process gracefully. Which command should be used?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
kill 1234
kill sends a signal; by default it sends SIGTERM (15), which asks the process to terminate gracefully. SIGKILL (9) is forceful.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
killall 1234
Why it's wrong here
killall kills processes by name, not PID; if PID is numeric, it may be treated as name, but not standard.
- ✓
kill 1234
Why this is correct
Default signal is SIGTERM (15), which requests graceful termination.
- ✗
pkill -9 1234
Why it's wrong here
pkill with -9 sends SIGKILL, not graceful.
- ✗
kill -9 1234
Why it's wrong here
SIGKILL kills immediately, not gracefully.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This XK0-006 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the XK0-006 exam.