NAME

       kill - send a signal to a process

SYNOPSIS

       kill [options] <pid> [...]

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

       <pid> [...]
              Send signal to every <pid> listed.

       -<signal>
       -s <signal>
       --signal <signal>
              Specify  the  signal  to  be  sent.   The  signal can be specified by using name or
              number.  The behavior 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.

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.

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 ⟨albert@users.sf.net⟩ 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⟩