NAME

kill − terminate a process with extreme prejudice

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 signal(2)). The signal names are listed by ‘kill −l’, 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; ‘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 (i.e. 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 process number of an asynchronous process started with ‘&’ is reported by the shell.  Process numbers can also be found by using Kill is a built-in to csh(1); it allows job specifiers “%...” so process id’s are not as often used as kill arguments.  See csh(1) for details.

SEE ALSO

csh(1), ps(1), kill(2), signal(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.

th Berkeley Distribution