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KILL(1) General Commands Manual KILL(1)
kill - send a signal to one or more processes
kill [-q value|--queue value] pid ... kill -signal [-q value|--queue value] pid-or-pgid ... kill -s signal [-q value|--queue value] pid-or-pgid ... kill --signal signal [-q value|--queue value] pid-or-pgid ... kill -l [signal] kill --list [signal] kill -L kill --table
kill sends a signal to one or more processes by pid or pgid, a process or process group identifier. signal(7) explains the varieties and behavior of signals. kill's default signal is TERM. The -l and -L options list available signals. Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0. Specify signals by number, by name, or by name with a “SIG” prefix; for example, -9, -SIGKILL, and -KILL are equivalent. A negative operand selects a process group; see the PGID column in ps(1) command output. A pid of -1 is special; it indicates all processes except the kill process itself and init(8). The -q option uses an alternative signaling method to to additionally transmit an integral value to a receiving process. If that process has installed a handler for the signal and specified the SA_SIGINFO flag to sigaction(2), then it can obtain this datum via the si_value field of the siginfo_t structure.
-signal -s signal --signal signal Send signal by name or number as described above. If signal is 0 (zero), kill sends no signal, but still validates its operands; this behavior permits the caller to check whether the specified pids and/or pgids exist and it has permission to send them signals. -q value --queue value Use sigqueue(3) rather than kill(2) to additionally send value to each pid or pgid. -l [signal] --list [signal] Without an argument, list signal names. The optional argument causes kill to convert the specified signal from name to numeric form, or vice versa as appropriate, and report the translation. -L --table List signal names in tabular format.
The shell (command-line interpreter) often has a built-in “kill” command. You may need to run the command described here as /bin/ kill to override the shell built-in. If you use a negative operand, specify a signal by name or number first so that kill can distinguish it from a process group. For example, the command “kill 123 -9” is ambiguous; it could mean to kill process 123 with signal 9, or to kill process 123 and process group 9 with the default signal.
kill -HUP -1 Send hangup signal to all the processes you can. kill -l 11 Report name corresponding to signal number 11. kill 123 543 Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to processes 123 and 543. kill -SIGTERM -123 Send the signal SIGTERM to process group 123.
kill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7), sigqueue(3), skill(1)
Please send bug reports to ⟨procps@freelists.org⟩.
This page is part of the procps-ng (/proc filesystem utilities)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps/blob/master/Documentation/bugs.md⟩.
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⟨https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps.git⟩ on 2025-02-02. (At that
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procps-ng 2023-12-27 KILL(1)