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KILL

Section: User Commands (1)

Updated: October 2011

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NAME

kill - send a signal to a process

SYNOPSIS

kill [options] <pid> [...]

DESCRIPTION

The default signal for kill is TERM. Use -l or -L to list available signals. Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0. Alternate signals may be specified in three ways: -9, -SIGKILL or -KILL. Negative PID values may be used to choose whole process groups; see the PGID column in ps command output. A PID of -1 is special; it indicates all processes except the kill process itself and init.

OPTIONS

<pid> [...]: Send signal to every <pid> listed.:
-<signal>: -s <signal> --signal <signal> Specify the signal to be sent. The signal can be specified by using name or number. The behavior of signals is explained in signal ?(7) manual page.:
-l, --list [signal]: List signal names. This option has optional argument, which will convert signal number to signal name, or other way round.:
-L, --table: List signal names in a nice table.:

NOTES

Your shell (command line interpreter) may have a built-in kill command. You may need to run the command described here as /bin/kill to solve the conflict.

EXAMPLES

kill -9 -1: Kill all processes you can kill.:
kill -l 11: Translate number 11 into a signal name.:
kill -L: List the available signal choices in a nice table.:
kill 123 543 2341 3453: Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.: