bitcoind: graceful termination?

[Proofer]

bitcoind 0.5.1, Mac OS 10.6.7

When I quit the GUI version, Bitcoin-Qt, it often takes quite a while for it to actually terminate.  I assume it's doing some kind of cleanup, perhaps related to network connections.

I don't see any bitcoind command to accomplish an orderly shutdown.  Is there gentler way than killing the process?

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use "bitcoind stop" or any equivalent through the JSON-RPC interface.

By the way most of the shutdown time is spent in the database logs cleanup. You can somewhat speed this up by defragmenting all the *.dat files. Significant further speed-up is achieved by the  reorganization of blkindex.dat: use db_dump & db_restore; just be careful to set the DB_CONFIG correctly.

[Proofer]

use "bitcoind stop" or any equivalent through the JSON-RPC interface.

By the way most of the shutdown time is spent in the database logs cleanup. You can somewhat speed this up by defragmenting all the *.dat files. Significant further speed-up is achieved by the  reorganization of blkindex.dat: use db_dump & db_restore; just be careful to set the DB_CONFIG correctly.

OK; thanks!

Meanwhile, for any newbies like me...

To get usage and options:
bitcoind -?   #whether bitcoind is running or not
To get a list of commands:
bitcoind help  #when bitcoind is running