killall -- kill processes by name
killall [-d | -v] [-h | -?] [-help] [-l] [-m] [-s] [-z] [-j jid]
[-u user] [-t tty] [-c procname] [-SIGNAL] [procname ...]
The killall utility kills processes selected by name, as opposed to the
selection by pid as done by kill(1). By default, it will send a TERM
signal to all processes with a real UID identical to the caller of
killall that match the name procname. The super-user is allowed to kill
any process.
The options are as follows:
-d | -v Be more verbose about what will be done. For a single
-d option, a list of the processes that will be sent
the signal will be printed, or a message indicating
that no matching processes have been found.
-h | -?
-help Give a help on the command usage and exit.
-l List the names of the available signals and exit, like
in kill(1).
-m Match the argument procname as a (case insensitive)
regular expression against the names of processes
found. CAUTION! This is dangerous, a single dot will
match any process running under the real UID of the
caller.
-s Show only what would be done, but do not send any signal.
-SIGNAL Send a different signal instead of the default TERM.
The signal may be specified either as a name (with or
without a leading SIG), or numerically.
-j jid Kill processes in the jail specified by jid.
-u user Limit potentially matching processes to those belonging
to the specified user.
-t tty Limit potentially matching processes to those running
on the specified tty.
-c procname
When used with the -u or -t flags, limit potentially
matching processes to those matching the specified
procname.
-z Do not skip zombies. This should not have any effect
except to print a few error messages if there are zombie
processes that match the specified pattern.
Sending a signal to all processes with uid XYZ is already supported by
kill(1). So use kill(1) for this job (e.g. $ kill -TERM -1 or as root $
echo kill -TERM -1 | su -m <user>)
The killall command will respond with a short usage message and exit with
a status of 2 in case of a command error. A status of 1 will be returned
if either no matching process has been found or not all processes have
been signalled successfully. Otherwise, a status of 0 will be returned.
Diagnostic messages will only be printed if requested by -d options.
kill(1), sysctl(3), jail(8)
The killall command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1. It has been modeled after
the killall command as available on other platforms.
The killall program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
Wolfram Schneider, this manual page has been written by Jorg Wunsch. The
current version of killall was rewritten in C by Peter Wemm using
sysctl(3).
FreeBSD 5.2.1 April 8, 2003 FreeBSD 5.2.1 [ Back ] | 