kill

 


 KILL(1)             Linux Programmer's Manual             KILL(1)
 
 
 

NAME

kill - terminate a process

SYNOPSIS

kill [ -s signal | -p ] [ -a ] [ -- ] pid ... kill -l [ signal ]

DESCRIPTION

The command kill sends the specified signal to the speci­ fied process or process group. If no signal is specified, the TERM signal is sent. The TERM signal will kill pro­ cesses which do not catch this signal. For other pro­ cesses, it may be necessary to use the KILL (9) signal, since this signal cannot be caught. Most modern shells have a builtin kill function, with a usage rather similar to that of the command described here. The `-a' and `-p' options, and the possibility to specify pids by command name is a local extension.

OPTIONS

pid... Specify the list of processes that kill should sig­ nal. Each pid can be one of five things: n where n is larger than 0. The process with pid n will be signaled. 0 All processes in the current process group are signaled. -1 All processes with pid larger than 1 will be signaled. -n where n is larger than 1. All processes in process group n are signaled. When an argu­ ment of the form `-n' is given, and it is meant to denote a process group, either the signal must be specified first, or the argu­ ment must be preceded by a `--' option, oth­ erwise it will be taken as the signal to send. commandname All processes invoked using that name will be signaled. -s signal Specify the signal to send. The signal may be given as a signal name or number. -l Print a list of signal names. These are found in /usr/include/linux/signal.h -a Do not restrict the commandname-to-pid conversion to processes with the same uid as the present pro­ cess. -p Specify that kill should only print the process id (pid) of the named processes, and not send any sig­ nals.

SEE ALSO

bash(1), tcsh(1), kill(2), sigvec(2), signal(7)

AUTHOR

Taken from BSD 4.4. The ability to translate process names to process ids was added by Salvatore Valente <sva­ lente@mit.edu>. Linux Utilities 14 October 1994 KILL(1)