killall.1   [plain text]


.\" Copyright (C) 1995 by Joerg Wunsch, Dresden
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.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/killall/killall.1,v 1.22 2001/11/30 00:30:28 bsd Exp $
.\"
.Dd June 25, 1995
.Os
.Dt KILLALL 1
.Sh NAME
.Nm killall
.Nd kill processes by name
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl d | v
.Op Fl h | ?\&
.Op Fl help
.Op Fl l
.Op Fl m
.Op Fl s
.Op Fl u Ar user
.Op Fl t Ar tty
.Op Fl c Ar procname
.Op Fl SIGNAL
.Op Ar procname ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm Killall
kills processes selected by name, as opposed to the selection by pid
as done by
.Xr kill 1 .
By default, it will send a
.Dv TERM
signal to all processes with a real UID identical to the
caller of
.Nm
that match the name
.Ar procname .
The super-user is allowed to kill any process.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent
.It Fl d | v
Be more verbose about what will be done.  For a single
.Fl d
option, a list of the processes that will be sent the signal will be
printed, or a message indicating that no matching processes have been
found.
.It Fl h | ?\&
.It Fl help
Give a help on the command usage and exit.
.It Fl l
List the names of the available signals and exit, like in
.Xr kill 1 .
.It Fl m
Match the argument
.Ar procname
as a (case insensitive) regular expression against the names
of processes found.
CAUTION!  This is dangerous, a single dot will match any process
running under the real UID of the caller.
.It Fl s
Show only what would be done, but do not send any signal.
.It Fl SIGNAL
Send a different signal instead of the default
.Dv TERM .
The signal may be specified either as a name
(with or without a leading
.Dv SIG ) ,
or numerically.
.It Fl u Ar user
Limit potentially matching processes to those belonging to
the specified
.Ar user .
.It Fl t Ar tty
Limit potentially matching processes to those running on
the specified
.Ar tty .
.It Fl c Ar procname
When used with the
.Fl u
or
.Fl t
flags, limit potentially matching processes to those matching
the specified
.Ar progname .
.El
.Sh ALL PROCESSES
Sending a signal to all processes with uid
.Nm XYZ
is already supported by
.Xr kill 1 .
So use
.Xr kill 1
for this job (e.g. $ kill -TERM -1 or
as root $ echo kill -TERM -1 | su -m <user>)
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
The
.Nm
command will respond with a short usage message and exit with a status
of 2 in case of a command error.  A status of 1 will be returned if
either no matching process has been found or not all processes have
been signalled successfully.  Otherwise, a status of 0 will be
returned.
.Pp
Diagnostic messages will only be printed if requested by
.Fl d
options.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr sysctl 3
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Fx 2.1 .
It has been modeled after the
.Nm
command as available on other platforms.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
.An Wolfram Schneider ,
this manual page has been written by
.An J\(:org Wunsch .
The current version of
.Nm
was rewritten in C by
.An Peter Wemm
using
.Xr sysctl 3 .