SIGTERM (Signal 15): Meaning, Exit Code 143 & Fix

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

SIGTERM is Unix signal 15. A process terminated by it reports exit code 143 (128 + 15).

SIGTERM asks a process to terminate, allowing cleanup (the polite default of kill). When it kills a process, the shell reports exit code 143 - the 128 + signal-number convention.

What it means

A graceful shutdown - cancellation, a step timeout, spot-instance preemption, or orchestrated shutdown.

When it happens in CI

A step timeout-minutes elapsed.
A spot/preemptible instance was reclaimed.
A graceful kill or orchestrator scale-down.

How to handle it

If from preemption or a transient timeout, a retry usually succeeds - Latchkey retries these automatically. If from a real timeout, speed up the job.

Related guides

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References

GitHub Actions documentation