I'm developing a python script that runs as a daemon in a linux environment. If and when I need to issue a shutdown/restart operation to the device, I want to do some cleanup and log data to a file to persist it through the shutdown.
I've looked around regarding Linux shutdown and I can't find anything detailing which, if any, signal, is sent to applications at the time of shutdown/restart. I assumed sigterm but my tests (which are not very good tests) seem to disagree with this.
When Linux is shutting down, (and this is slightly dependent on what kind of init scripts you are using) it first sends SIGTERM to all processes to shut them down, and then I believe will try SIGKILL to force them to close if they're not responding to SIGTERM.
Please note, however, that your script may not receive the SIGTERM - init may send this signal to the shell it's running in instead and it could kill python without actually passing the signal on to your script.
Hope this helps!
Handling a linux system shutdown operation "gracefully"