Hi there,

In the Installation Guide for the 5.3 AIX Server, the following
snippet appears:

"If you started the server as a background process, connect to the
server as an administrative client and issue the HALT command. If
you cannot connect to the server with an administrative client,
you must use the kill -9 command with the process ID number (pid)
that is displayed at initialization."

As Randal L. Schwartz put it:

> No no no.  Don't use kill -9.
>
> It doesn't give the process a chance to cleanly:
>
> 1) shut down socket connections
>
> 2) clean up temp files
>
> 3) inform its children that it is going away
>
> 4) reset its terminal characteristics
>
> and so on and so on and so on.
>
> Generally, send 15, and wait a second or two, and if that doesn't
> work, send 2, and if that doesn't work, send 1.  If that doesn't,
> REMOVE THE BINARY because the program is badly behaved!
>
> Don't use kill -9.  Don't bring out the combine harvester just to tidy
> up the flower pot.

What is the reason the Installation Guide tells us to do "kill -9"?

--
Jurjen Oskam
  "E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering
  what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool
  out onto the screen." - R. Craig Hogan