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 receiving 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 number. 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
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 _