www.LinuxHowtos.org
KILL
Section: User Commands (1)Updated: October 2011
Index Return to Main Contents
NAME
kill - send a signal to a processSYNOPSIS
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.
SEE ALSO
kill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7), skill(1)STANDARDS
This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-specific.AUTHOR
Albert Cahalan wrote kill in 1999 to replace a bsdutils one that was not standards compliant. The util-linux one might also work correctly.REPORTING BUGS
Please send bug reports to