This indicates the linux has delivered a SIGTERM to your process. This is usually at the request of some other process (via kill()) but could also be sent by your process to itself (using raise()). This signal requests an orderly shutdown of your process.
If you need a quick cheatsheet of signal numbers, open a bash shell and:
$ kill -l
1) SIGHUP 2) SIGINT 3) SIGQUIT 4) SIGILL
5) SIGTRAP 6) SIGABRT 7) SIGBUS 8) SIGFPE
9) SIGKILL 10) SIGUSR1 11) SIGSEGV 12) SIGUSR2
13) SIGPIPE 14) SIGALRM 15) SIGTERM 16) SIGSTKFLT
17) SIGCHLD 18) SIGCONT 19) SIGSTOP 20) SIGTSTP
21) SIGTTIN 22) SIGTTOU 23) SIGURG 24) SIGXCPU
25) SIGXFSZ 26) SIGVTALRM 27) SIGPROF 28) SIGWINCH
29) SIGIO 30) SIGPWR 31) SIGSYS 34) SIGRTMIN
35) SIGRTMIN+1 36) SIGRTMIN+2 37) SIGRTMIN+3 38) SIGRTMIN+4
39) SIGRTMIN+5 40) SIGRTMIN+6 41) SIGRTMIN+7 42) SIGRTMIN+8
43) SIGRTMIN+9 44) SIGRTMIN+10 45) SIGRTMIN+11 46) SIGRTMIN+12
47) SIGRTMIN+13 48) SIGRTMIN+14 49) SIGRTMIN+15 50) SIGRTMAX-14
51) SIGRTMAX-13 52) SIGRTMAX-12 53) SIGRTMAX-11 54) SIGRTMAX-10
55) SIGRTMAX-9 56) SIGRTMAX-8 57) SIGRTMAX-7 58) SIGRTMAX-6
59) SIGRTMAX-5 60) SIGRTMAX-4 61) SIGRTMAX-3 62) SIGRTMAX-2
63) SIGRTMAX-1 64) SIGRTMAX
You can determine the sender by using an appropriate signal handler like:
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void sigterm_handler(int signal, siginfo_t *info, void *_unused)
{
fprintf(stderr, "Received SIGTERM from process with pid = %u\n",
info->si_pid);
exit(0);
}
int main (void)
{
struct sigaction action = {
.sa_handler = NULL,
.sa_sigaction = sigterm_handler,
.sa_mask = 0,
.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO,
.sa_restorer = NULL
};
sigaction(SIGTERM, &action, NULL);
sleep(60);
return 0;
}
Notice that the signal handler also includes a call to exit(). It's also possible for your program to continue to execute by ignoring the signal, but this isn't recommended in general (if it's a user doing it there's a good chance it will be followed by a SIGKILL if your process doesn't exit, and you lost your opportunity to do any cleanup then).