LFCS Essential Commands Practice Question
A system administrator wants to kill a process with PID 1234 that is not responding to SIGTERM. Which command will forcefully terminate it?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse signal numbers or assume that SIGTERM (signal 15) is always sufficient, not realizing that a process can mask or ignore it, while SIGKILL (signal 9) is the only signal that cannot be handled.
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 -9 1234
Kill -9 (SIGKILL) sends signal 9, which cannot be caught, blocked, or ignored by the process. Unlike SIGTERM (signal 15), SIGKILL forces the kernel to immediately terminate the process without allowing it to clean up, making it the appropriate choice when a process is unresponsive to SIGTERM.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
kill -1 1234
Why it's wrong here
Sends SIGHUP, which may not terminate the process.
- ✗
kill -15 1234
Why it's wrong here
Sends SIGTERM, which the process may ignore.
- ✗
kill -SIGTERM 1234
Why it's wrong here
Same as kill -15, may be ignored.
- ✓
kill -9 1234
Why this is correct
Sends SIGKILL, forcing termination.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every LFCS question from scratch — 507 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This LFCS practice question is part of Courseiva's free Linux Foundation 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 LFCS exam.