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.
-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 ALSOkill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7), 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 October 2011 KILL(1)