Equivalent of ctrl c in command to cancel a program

Try:

kill -SIGINT processPIDHere

Basically Ctrl C sends the SIGINT (interrupt) signal while kill sends the SIGTERM (termination) signal by default unless you specify the signal to send.

If you control the long-running remote process, you could install a signal handler for SIGTERM (see man signal and man sigaction and the many SO questions on this topic), to cleanup nicely before dieing.

That is a very common thing to do.

Here's an example for mongod

To start the daemon from the command line:

mongod &

Then later

kill -SIGINT `pgrep mongod`

ctrl c just sends a SIGINT signal, but there is some other signals that is a little more soft. http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/libc/Termination-Signals.html

I think that you can use the the kill command to send some other signal. (see man kill for more info)