KILL(1) User Commands KILL(1)
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.
-q, --queue value
Use sigqueue(3) rather than kill(2) and the value argument is
used to specify an integer to be sent with the signal. If the re-
ceiving process has installed a handler for this signal using the
SA_SIGINFO flag to sigaction(2), then it can obtain this data via
the si_value field of the siginfo_t structure.
-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.
If you use negative PID values, you will need to specify a signal as
well so that kill knows if the option is for the PID or the signal num-
ber. For example, issuing the command with the single option -9 it is
not clear if you mean signal 9 (SIGKILL) or process group 9.
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.
kill -SIGTERM -123
Send the signal SIGTERM to process group 123. The signal name or
number is required if specifying process groups with a negative
PID.
SEE ALSO
kill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7),
sigqueue(3), skill(1)
STANDARDS
This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-specific.
AUTHOR
]8;;albert@users.sf.net\Albert Cahalan]8;;\ 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 ]8;;procps@freelists.org\procps@freelists.org]8;;\
procps-ng 2023-01-16 KILL(1)
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