I liked SensorSmith answer at Forward SIGTERM to child in Bash, but for my systemctl script, it resulted in a double SIGTERM, because systemctl sends SIGTERM to the parent bash instance AND the child I am running. The result was instant termination before my child could gracefully shut down.
What's the proper way to handle SIGTERM in a bash script based service?
So I ended up with this and I am happy:
#!/bin/bash script_term() { echo $0 SIGTERM } wait_for_child() { term_child_pid=$! wait ${term_child_pid} 2>/dev/null trap - TERM INT wait ${term_child_pid} 2>/dev/null } trap 'script_term' TERM INT node index.js wait_for_child It waits properly in all the cases I care about, though it does not SIGTERM the child when the parent bash is SIGTERM'd.