Embedded mode uses kill -9 — no graceful shutdown or zero-downtime reload

[gsmlg]

Problem

Caddy.Server.Embedded terminates the Caddy process with SIGKILL:

• cleanup/2 (lib/caddy/server/embedded.ex:261) — kill -9 on the port OS pid
• cleanup_pidfile/0 (lib/caddy/server/embedded.ex:246) — kill -9 on stale pidfile pid

Impact

• In-flight connections are dropped on every stop/restart
• Caddy's graceful shutdown is skipped (lock release, cert maintenance cleanup)
• Caddy.restart_server/0 is stop-then-start, so every reconfigure in embedded mode incurs downtime

Fix

1. Use SIGTERM (or POST /stop via the Admin API) with a kill-timeout fallback to SIGKILL
2. Prefer graceful config swaps via /load for reconfiguration instead of full process restarts — restart should be the exception, not the reload mechanism