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KILL(1)                                             User Commands                                             KILL(1)



NAME
       kill - terminate a process

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

DESCRIPTION
       The command kill sends the specified signal to the specified process or process group.  If no signal is speci‐
       fied, the TERM signal is sent.  The TERM signal will kill processes which do not catch this signal.  For other
       processes, 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 processes by command name are a local  exten‐
       sion.

       If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is still performed.

OPTIONS
       pid... Specify the list of processes that kill should signal.  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 argument of
                     the form '-n' is given, and it is meant to denote a process group, either  the  signal  must  be
                     specified  first,  or the argument must be preceded by a '--' option, otherwise it will be taken
                     as the signal to send.

              commandname
                     All processes invoked using that name will be signaled.

       -s, --signal signal
              Specify the signal to send.  The signal may be given as a signal name or number.

       -l, --list [signal]
              Print a list of signal names, or convert signal given as argument to a name.  The signals are found  in
              /usr/include/linux/signal.h

       -L, --table
              Similar to -l, but will print signal names and their corresponding numbers.

       -a, --all
              Do  not  restrict  the  commandname-to-pid  conversion  to  processes  with the same uid as the present
              process.

       -p, --pid
              Specify that kill should only print the process id (pid) of the named processes, and not send any  sig‐
              nals.

       -q, --queue sigval
              Use  sigqueue(2)  rather  than kill(2) and the sigval argument is used to specify an integer to be sent
              with the signal.  If the receiving process has installed a handler for this signal using the SA_SIGINFO

       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
       ⟨[email protected]⟩.

AVAILABILITY
       The kill command is part of the util-linux  package  and  is  available  from  Linux  Kernel  Archive  ⟨ftp://
       ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.



util-linux                                            March 2013                                              KILL(1)