KILL man page on OpenBSD

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KILL(2)			  OpenBSD Programmer's Manual		       KILL(2)

NAME
     kill - send signal to a process

SYNOPSIS
     #include <signal.h>

     int
     kill(pid_t pid, int sig);

DESCRIPTION
     The kill() function sends the signal given by sig to pid, a process or a
     group of processes.  sig may be one of the signals specified in
     sigaction(2) or it may be 0, in which case error checking is performed
     but no signal is actually sent.  This can be used to check the validity
     of pid.

     For a process to have permission to send a signal to a process designated
     by pid, the real or effective user ID of the receiving process must match
     that of the sending process or the user must have appropriate privileges
     (such as given by a set-user-ID program or the user is the superuser).  A
     single exception is the signal SIGCONT, which may always be sent to any
     process with the same session ID as the caller.

     If pid is greater than zero:
	     sig is sent to the process whose ID is equal to pid.

     If pid is zero:
	     sig is sent to all processes whose group ID is equal to the
	     process group ID of the sender, and for which the process has
	     permission; this is a variant of killpg(3).

     If pid is -1:
	     If the user has superuser privileges, the signal is sent to all
	     processes excluding system processes and the process sending the
	     signal.  If the user is not the superuser, the signal is sent to
	     all processes with the same uid as the user excluding the process
	     sending the signal.  No error is returned if any process could be
	     signaled.

     Setuid and setgid processes are dealt with slightly differently.  For the
     non-root user, to prevent attacks against such processes, some signal
     deliveries are not permitted and return the error EPERM.  The following
     signals are allowed through to this class of processes: SIGKILL, SIGINT,
     SIGTERM, SIGSTOP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, SIGTSTP, SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2.

     For compatibility with System V, if the process number is negative but
     not -1, the signal is sent to all processes whose process group ID is
     equal to the absolute value of the process number.	 This is a variant of
     killpg(3).

RETURN VALUES
     Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value
     of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS
     kill() will fail and no signal will be sent if:

     [EINVAL]	   sig is not a valid signal number.

     [ESRCH]	   No process can be found corresponding to that specified by
		   pid.

     [ESRCH]	   The process ID was given as 0 but the sending process does
		   not have a process group.

     [EPERM]	   The sending process is not the superuser and its effective
		   user ID does not match the effective user ID of the
		   receiving process.  When signaling a process group, this
		   error is returned if any members of the group could not be
		   signaled.

SEE ALSO
     getpgrp(2), getpid(2), sigaction(2), killpg(3), raise(3)

STANDARDS
     The kill() function is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988
     (``POSIX'').

OpenBSD 4.9			 May 31, 2007			   OpenBSD 4.9
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