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
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.
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),
sigqueue(3), skill(1)
STANDARDS
This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-spe-
cific.
AUTHOR
Albert Cahalan ⟨albert@users.sf.net⟩ 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 ⟨procps@freelists.org⟩
procps-ng 2021-05-18 KILL(1)
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