DESCRIPTION
The general mechanism for interprocess communication is called signals.
The kill command
might have been more accurately named "signal". kill sends a SIGTERM by
default, but can send any signal, and kill -9 < process_id >
sends
a
SIGKILL. 9 is the signal number for SIGKILL. see "section 7"
signal for the list.
The kernel calls underlying the signal mechanism are documented in "section 2" signal and the call-specific seedocs.....