1KILL(1)                    Linux Programmer's Manual                   KILL(1)
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NAME

6       kill - terminate a process
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SYNOPSIS

9       kill [-s signal|-p] [--] pid...
10       kill -l [signal]
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DESCRIPTION

13       The command kill sends the specified signal to the specified process or
14       process group.  If no signal is specified, the  TERM  signal  is  sent.
15       The  TERM  signal  will  kill processes which do not catch this signal.
16       For other processes, it may be necessary to use the  KILL  (9)  signal,
17       since this signal cannot be caught.
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19       Most  modern  shells  have a builtin kill function, with a usage rather
20       similar to that of the  command  described  here.  The  `-a'  and  `-p'
21       options, and the possibility to specify pids by command name is a local
22       extension.
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24       If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is  still  per‐
25       formed.
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OPTIONS

28       pid... Specify the list of processes that kill should signal.  Each pid
29              can be one of five things:
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32              n      where n is larger than 0.  The process with pid n will be
33                     signaled.
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35              0      All processes in the current process group are signaled.
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37              -1     All processes with pid larger than 1 will be signaled.
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39              -n     where n is larger than 1.  All processes in process group
40                     n are signaled.  When an argument of  the  form  `-n'  is
41                     given,  and it is meant to denote a process group, either
42                     the signal must be specified first, or the argument  must
43                     be  preceded by a `--' option, otherwise it will be taken
44                     as the signal to send.
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46              commandname
47                     All processes invoked using that name will be signaled.
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49       -s signal
50              Specify the signal to send.  The signal may be given as a signal
51              name or number.
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53       -l     Print   a   list   of   signal   names.    These  are  found  in
54              /usr/include/linux/signal.h
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56       -a     Do not restrict the commandname-to-pid conversion  to  processes
57              with the same uid as the present process.
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59       -p     Specify  that kill should only print the process id (pid) of the
60              named processes, and not send any signals.
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NOTES

63       It is not possible to send a signal to explicitly selected thread in  a
64       multithreaded process by kill(2) syscall.  If kill(2) is used to send a
65       signal to a thread group, then kernel selects arbitrary member  of  the
66       thread  group  that  has  not blocked the signal.  For more details see
67       clone(2) CLONE_THREAD description.
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69       The command kill(1) as well as syscall kill(2) accepts TID (thread  ID,
70       see  gettid(2))  as  argument.   In  this case the kill behavior is not
71       changed and the signal is also delivered to  the  thread  group  rather
72       than to the specified thread.
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SEE ALSO

75       bash(1), tcsh(1), kill(2), sigvec(2), signal(7)
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AUTHOR

78       Taken  from BSD 4.4.  The ability to translate process names to process
79       ids was added by Salvatore Valente <svalente@mit.edu>.
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AVAILABILITY

82       The kill command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is  available
83       from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
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87Linux Utilities                 14 October 1994                        KILL(1)