Linux Process Killed (Signal 9)

Overview

Linux "Killed" message (SIGKILL, signal 9) means the process was forcefully terminated, usually by the OOM killer or an administrator.

Key Details

• Process terminated with exit code 137 (128 + 9)
• SIGKILL cannot be caught or handled by the process
• Most commonly caused by OOM killer
• Process had no chance to clean up or save state

Common Causes

• OOM killer terminated the process to free memory
• Administrator sent kill -9 command
• Container runtime killed process exceeding memory limit
• Systemd cgroup memory limit exceeded

Steps

1. 1Check dmesg for OOM killer messages: dmesg | grep -i "killed process"
2. 2Check available memory: free -h
3. 3Increase available RAM or add swap
4. 4Set memory limits in cgroup or container config

Tags

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Frequently Asked Questions