NAME

kill − send a signal to a process, or terminate a process

SYNOPSIS

kill [ −sig ] processid ...
kill −l

DESCRIPTION

Kill sends the TERM (terminate, 15) signal to the specified processes.  If a signal name or number preceded by ‘−’ is given as first argument, that signal is sent instead of terminate (see sigvec(2)). The signal names are listed by using the −l option, and are as given in /usr/include/signal.h, stripped of the common SIG prefix.

The terminate signal will kill processes that do not catch the signal, so kill  −9  ... is a sure kill, as the KILL (9) signal cannot be caught.  By convention, if process number 0 is specified, all members in the process group (that is, processes resulting from the current login) are signaled (but beware: this works only if you use sh(1); not if you use csh(1).) The killed processes must belong to the current user unless he is the super-user.

To shut the system down and bring it up single user the super-user may send the initialization process a TERM (terminate) signal by ‘kill 1’; see init(8). To force init to close and open terminals according to what is currently in /etc/ttys use ‘kill −HUP 1’ (sending a hangup, signal 1). 

The shell reports the process number of an asynchronous process started with ‘&’ (run in the background).  Process numbers can also be found by using ps(1).

Kill is built in to csh(1); it allows job specifiers, such as kill  %..., in place of kill arguments.  See csh(1) for details.

OPTIONS

−l Display a list of signal names. 

SEE ALSO

csh(1), ps(1), kill(2), sigvec(2)

BUGS

An option to kill process groups ala killpg(2) should be provided; a replacement for kill  0 for csh(1) users should be provided.

Sun Release 2.0  —  Last change: 24 October 1983