misc-utils/kill.1

.\" Copyright 1994 Salvatore Valente (svalente@mit.edu)
.\" Copyright 1992 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License
.TH KILL 1 "July 2014" "util-linux" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
kill \- terminate a process
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B kill
.RB [ \- \fIsignal\fR| \-s
.IR signal | \fB-p\fP ]
.RB [ \-q
.IR value ]
.RB [ \-a ]
.RB [ \-\- ]
.IR pid | name ...
.br
.B kill \-l
.RI [ number ]
.RB "| " \-L
.SH DESCRIPTION
The command
.B kill
sends the specified \fIsignal\fR to the specified processes or process groups.
If no signal is specified, the TERM signal is sent.  This TERM signal will kill
processes that do not catch it; for other processes it may be necessary to use
the KILL signal (number 9), since this signal cannot be caught.
.PP
Most modern shells have a builtin kill function, with a usage rather similar to
that of the command described here.  The
.BR \-\-all ,
.BR \-\-pid ", and"
.BR \-\-queue
options, and the possibility to specify processes by command name, are local extensions.
.PP
If \fIsignal\fR is 0, then no actual signal is sent, but error checking is still performed.

.SH ARGUMENTS
The list of processes to be signaled can be a mixture of names and pids.
.TP
.I pid
Each
.I pid
can be one of four things:
.RS
.TP
.I n
where
.I n
is larger than 0.  The process with pid
.I n
is signaled.
.TP
.B 0
All processes in the current process group are signaled.
.TP
.B -1
All processes with a pid larger than 1 are signaled.
.TP
.BI - n
where
.I n
is larger than 1.  All processes in process group
.I n
are signaled.  When an argument of the form '-n' is given, and it is meant to
denote a process group, either a signal must be specified first, or the
argument must be preceded by a '--' option, otherwise it will be taken as the
signal to send.
.RE
.TP
.I name
All processes invoked using this \fIname\fR will be signaled.

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB\-s\fR, \fB\-\-signal\fR \fIsignal\fR
The signal to send.  It may be given as a name or a number.
.TP
\fB\-l\fR, \fB\-\-list\fR [\fInumber\fR]
Print a list of signal names, or convert the given signal number to a name.
The signals can be found in
.I /usr/\:include/\:linux/\:signal.h
.TP
\fB\-L\fR, \fB\-\-table\fR
Similar to \fB\-l\fR, but it will print signal names and their corresponding
numbers.
.TP
\fB\-a\fR, \fB\-\-all\fR
Do not restrict the commandname-to-pid conversion to processes with the same
uid as the present process.
.TP
\fB\-p\fR, \fB\-\-pid\fR
Only print the process id (pid) of the named processes, do not send any
signals.
.IP
The \fB\-\-pid\fR option is automatically enabled when the \fBkill\fR command
is invoked with the name of
.BR pid .
This functionality is deprecated, and will be removed in March 2016.
.TP
\fB\-q\fR, \fB\-\-queue\fR \fIvalue\fR
Use
.BR sigqueue (2)
rather than
.BR kill (2).
The
.I value
argument is an integer that is sent along with the signal.  If the
receiving process has installed a handler for this signal using the SA_SIGINFO
flag to
.BR sigaction (2),
then it can obtain this data via the si_sigval field of the siginfo_t structure.

.SH NOTES
It is not possible to send a signal to an explicitly selected thread in a
multithreaded process using the
.BR kill (2)
syscall.  If
.BR kill(2)
is used to send a signal to a thread group, then the kernel selects an arbitrary
member of the thread group that has not blocked the signal.  For more details
see
.BR clone (2),
the CLONE_THREAD description.
.PP
The command
.BR kill (1)
as well as syscall
.BR kill (2)
accept a TID (thread ID, see
.BR gettid (2))
as an argument.  In this case the kill behavior is not changed and the signal is
also delivered to the thread group rather than to the specified thread.

.SH RETURN CODES
.B kill
has the following return codes:
.TP
.BR 0
success
.TP
.BR 1
failure
.TP
.BR 64
partial success (when more than one process specified)

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR bash (1),
.BR tcsh (1),
.BR kill (2),
.BR sigvec (2),
.BR signal (7)

.SH AUTHORS
.MT svalente@mit.edu
Salvatore Valente
.ME
.br
.MT kzak@redhat.com
Karel Zak
.ME
.br
.PP
The original version was taken from BSD 4.4.

.SH AVAILABILITY
The kill command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
.UR ftp://\:ftp.kernel.org\:/pub\:/linux\:/utils\:/util-linux/
Linux Kernel Archive
.UE .