Manual: kill

KILL(1)						User Commands					     KILL(1)

NAME
       kill - send a signal to a process

SYNOPSIS
       kill [options]  [...]

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
        [...]
	      Send signal to every  listed.

       -
       -s 
       --signal 
	      Specify the signal to be sent.  The signal can be specified by using name or number.  The	 be‐
	      havior of signals is explained in signal(7) manual page.

       -q, --queue value
	      Use sigqueue(3) rather than kill(2) and the value argument is used to specify an integer to be
	      sent  with  the signal. If the receiving process has installed a handler for this signal using
	      the SA_SIGINFO flag to sigaction(2), then it can obtain this data via the	 si_value  field  of
	      the siginfo_t structure.

       -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.

       If  you	use negative PID values, you will need to specify a signal as well so that kill knows if the
       option is for the PID or the signal number. For example, issuing the command with the  single  option
       -9 it is not clear if you mean signal 9 (SIGKILL) or process group 9.

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.

       kill -SIGTERM -123
	      Send  the signal SIGTERM to process group 123. The signal name or number is required if speci‐
	      fying process groups with a negative PID.

SEE ALSO
       kill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7), sigqueue(3), skill(1)

STANDARDS
       This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-specific.

AUTHOR
       Albert Cahalan 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					 2023-01-16					     KILL(1)