# Guided Exercise: Choosing the Right Signal

This is a paper exercise — commit to an answer before checking it in the Lab.

## Your task

For each situation, decide: plain `kill` (SIGTERM) first, or is `kill -9` (SIGKILL) actually
justified?

1. A normal web server process you want to shut down for a routine restart.
2. A process that received SIGTERM two minutes ago and is still running, showing no signs of
   responding.
3. A script you just started by mistake, that hasn't done anything harmful yet.

## A worked shape to check yourself against

1. Plain `kill` — give it the chance to shut down cleanly (close connections, flush data, etc).
2. `kill -9` is now justified — you already gave it the polite chance, and it didn't respond.
3. Plain `kill` first, still — "just started" doesn't change the default; SIGKILL is a last
   resort, not a shortcut for convenience.

## Instructor Notes

**Facilitation:** Item 3 sometimes trips students who reach for `-9` out of impatience — worth
reinforcing that SIGTERM-first is the discipline REGARDLESS of urgency, since a process that
ignores SIGTERM is the actual signal that escalation is warranted.

**Approximate timing:** 8-10 minutes live discussion; 5 minutes self-paced.