PackageKit Reference Manual: Cancellation

## Cancellation

If you have a multipart transaction that can be aborted in one phase but not another then the AllowCancel signal can be sent. This allows for example the yum download to be cancelled, but not the install transaction. By cancelling a job all subtransactions are killed.

By default actions cannot be cancelled unless enabled in the backend. Use `AllowCancel(true)` to enable cancellation and `AllowCancel(false)` to disable it. This can be done for any job type.

For compiled backends that are threaded, the `cancel()` method can be used to terminate the thread.

For spawned backends, there are two staggered signals send to allow locks to be released or for the backend to clean up after itself:

- Send the process `SIGQUIT`.

- Wait 500ms

- If the process has not already quit, send the process `SIGKILL` to terminate it.