1KILLALL(1) User Commands KILLALL(1)
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6 killall - kill processes by name
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9 killall [-Z, --context pattern] [-e, --exact] [-g, --process-group]
10 [-i, --interactive] [-n, --ns PID] [-o, --older-than TIME]
11 [-q, --quiet] [-r, --regexp] [-s, --signal SIGNAL, -SIGNAL] [-u, --user
12 user] [-v, --verbose] [-w, --wait] [-y, --younger-than TIME] [-I, --ig‐
13 nore-case] [-V, --version] [--] name ...
14 killall -l
15 killall -V, --version
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18 killall sends a signal to all processes running any of the specified
19 commands. If no signal name is specified, SIGTERM is sent.
20 Signals can be specified either by name (e.g. -HUP or -SIGHUP) or by
22 number (e.g. -1) or by option -s.
23 If the command name is not regular expression (option -r) and contains
25 a slash (/), processes executing that particular file will be selected
26 for killing, independent of their name.
27 killall returns a zero return code if at least one process has been
29 killed for each listed command, or no commands were listed and at least
30 one process matched the -u and -Z search criteria. killall returns
31 non-zero otherwise.
32 A killall process never kills itself (but may kill other killall pro‐
34 cesses).
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37 -e, --exact
38 Require an exact match for very long names. If a command name
39 is longer than 15 characters, the full name may be unavailable
40 (i.e. it is swapped out). In this case, killall will kill ev‐
41 erything that matches within the first 15 characters. With -e,
42 such entries are skipped. killall prints a message for each
43 skipped entry if -v is specified in addition to -e.
44 -I, --ignore-case
46 Do case insensitive process name match.
47 -g, --process-group
49 Kill the process group to which the process belongs. The kill
50 signal is only sent once per group, even if multiple processes
51 belonging to the same process group were found.
52 -i, --interactive
54 Interactively ask for confirmation before killing.
55 -l, --list
57 List all known signal names.
58 -n, --ns
60 Match against the PID namespace of the given PID. The default is
61 to match against all namespaces.
62 -o, --older-than
64 Match only processes that are older (started before) the time
65 specified. The time is specified as a float then a unit. The
66 units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes, hours, days,
67 weeks, months and years respectively.
68 -q, --quiet
70 Do not complain if no processes were killed.
71 -r, --regexp
73 Interpret process name pattern as a POSIX extended regular ex‐
74 pression, per regex(3).
75 -s, --signal, -SIGNAL
77 Send this signal instead of SIGTERM.
78 -u, --user
80 Kill only processes the specified user owns. Command names are
81 optional.
82 -v, --verbose
84 Report if the signal was successfully sent.
85 -V, --version
87 Display version information.
88 -w, --wait
90 Wait for all killed processes to die. killall checks once per
91 second if any of the killed processes still exist and only re‐
92 turns if none are left. Note that killall may wait forever if
93 the signal was ignored, had no effect, or if the process stays
94 in zombie state.
95 -y, --younger-than
97 Match only processes that are younger (started after) the time
98 specified. The time is specified as a float then a unit. The
99 units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes, hours, days,
100 weeks, Months and years respectively.
101 -Z, --context
103 Specify security context: kill only processes having security
104 context that match with given extended regular expression pat‐
105 tern. Must precede other arguments on the command line. Com‐
106 mand names are optional.
107
109 /proc location of the proc file system
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112 Killing by file only works for executables that are kept open during
113 execution, i.e. impure executables can't be killed this way.
114 Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on
116 non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
117 killall -w doesn't detect if a process disappears and is replaced by a
119 new process with the same PID between scans.
120 If processes change their name, killall may not be able to match them
122 correctly.
123 killall has a limit of names that can be specified on the command line.
125 This figure is the size of an unsigned long integer multiplied by 8.
126 For most 32 bit systems the limit is 32 and similarly for a 64 bit sys‐
127 tem the limit is usually 64.
128
130 kill(1), fuser(1), pgrep(1), pidof(1), pkill(1), ps(1), kill(2),
131 regex(3).
132psmisc 2021-01-11 KILLALL(1)