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.

       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  specifying
              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)