procps/kill.1

'\" t
.\" (The preceding line is a note to broken versions of man to tell
.\" them to pre-process this man page with tbl)
.\" Man page for kill.
.\" Licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
.\" Written by Albert Cahalan; converted to a man page by
.\" Michael K. Johnson
.TH KILL 1 "November 21, 1999" "Linux" "Linux User's Manual"
.SH NAME
kill \- send a signal to a process

.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBkill\fR [ \-\fBsignal\fR | \-s \fBsignal\fR ] \fBpid\fR ...
.br
\fBkill\fR [ \-L | -V, \-\-version ]
.br
\fBkill\fR \-l  [ \fBsignal\fR ]

.SH 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 \-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.

.SH SIGNALS
The signals listed below may be available for use with kill.
When known constant, numbers and default behavior are shown.

.TS
lB rB lB lB
lfCW r l l.
Name	Num	Action	Description
0	0	n/a	exit code indicates if a signal may be sent
ALRM	14	exit
HUP	1	exit
INT	2	exit
KILL	9	exit	cannot be blocked
PIPE	13	exit
POLL		exit
PROF		exit
TERM	15	exit
USR1		exit
USR2		exit
VTALRM		exit
STKFLT		exit	might not be implemented
PWR		ignore	might exit on some systems
WINCH		ignore
CHLD		ignore
URG		ignore
TSTP		stop	might interact with the shell
TTIN		stop	might interact with the shell
TTOU		stop	might interact with the shell
STOP		stop	cannot be blocked
CONT		restart	continue if stopped, otherwise ignore
ABRT	6	core
FPE	8	core
ILL	4	core
QUIT	3	core
SEGV	11	core
TRAP	5	core
SYS		core	might not be implemented
EMT		core	might not be implemented
BUS		core	core dump might fail
XCPU		core	core dump might fail
XFSZ		core	core dump might fail
.TE

.SH 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.

.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
.B kill \-9 \-1
Kill all processes you can kill.
.TP
.B kill \-l 11
Translate number 11 into a signal name.
.TP
.B kill -L
List the available signal choices in a nice table.
.TP
.B kill 123 543 2341 3453
Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR pkill (1),
.BR skill (1),
.BR kill (2),
.BR renice (1),
.BR nice (1),
.BR signal (7),
.BR killall (1).

.SH STANDARDS
This command meets appropriate standards. The \-L flag is Linux-specific.

.SH 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.

Please send bug reports to <procps@freelists.org>