xref: /freebsd/bin/pkill/pkill.1 (revision fa9896e082a1046ff4fbc75fcba4d18d1f2efc19)

.\"	$NetBSD: pkill.1,v 1.8 2003/02/14 15:59:18 grant Exp $
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.\" Copyright (c) 2002 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
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.\" This code is derived from software contributed to The NetBSD Foundation
.\" by Andrew Doran.
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.Dd October 5, 2020
.Dt PKILL 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm pgrep , pkill
.Nd find or signal processes by name
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm pgrep
.Op Fl LSafilnoqvx
.Op Fl F Ar pidfile
.Op Fl G Ar gid
.Op Fl M Ar core
.Op Fl N Ar system
.Op Fl P Ar ppid
.Op Fl U Ar uid
.Op Fl c Ar class
.Op Fl d Ar delim
.Op Fl g Ar pgrp
.Op Fl j Ar jail
.Op Fl s Ar sid
.Op Fl t Ar tty
.Op Fl u Ar euid
.Ar pattern ...
.Nm pkill
.Op Fl Ar signal
.Op Fl ILafilnovx
.Op Fl F Ar pidfile
.Op Fl G Ar gid
.Op Fl M Ar core
.Op Fl N Ar system
.Op Fl P Ar ppid
.Op Fl U Ar uid
.Op Fl c Ar class
.Op Fl g Ar pgrp
.Op Fl j Ar jail
.Op Fl s Ar sid
.Op Fl t Ar tty
.Op Fl u Ar euid
.Ar pattern ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm pgrep
command searches the process table on the running system and prints the
process IDs of all processes that match the criteria given on the command
line.
.Pp
The
.Nm pkill
command searches the process table on the running system and signals all
processes that match the criteria given on the command line.
.Pp
The following options are available:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl F Ar pidfile"
.It Fl F Ar pidfile
Restrict matches to a process whose PID is stored in the
.Ar pidfile
file.
.It Fl G Ar gid
Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in the comma-separated
list
.Ar gid .
.It Fl I
Request confirmation before attempting to signal each process.
.It Fl L
The
.Ar pidfile
file given for the
.Fl F
option must be locked with the
.Xr flock 2
syscall or created with
.Xr pidfile 3 .
.It Fl M Ar core
Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core
instead of the currently running system.
.It Fl N Ar system
Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default,
which is the kernel image the system has booted from.
.It Fl P Ar ppid
Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID in the
comma-separated list
.Ar ppid .
.It Fl S
Search also in system processes (kernel threads).
.It Fl U Ar uid
Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-separated
list
.Ar uid .
.It Fl d Ar delim
Specify a delimiter to be printed between each process ID.
The default is a newline.
This option can only be used with the
.Nm pgrep
command.
.It Fl a
Include process ancestors in the match list.
By default, the current
.Nm pgrep
or
.Nm pkill
process and all of its ancestors are excluded (unless
.Fl v
is used).
.It Fl c Ar class
Restrict matches to processes running with specified login class
.Ar class .
.It Fl f
Match against full argument lists.
The default is to match against process names.
.It Fl g Ar pgrp
Restrict matches to processes with a process group ID in the comma-separated
list
.Ar pgrp .
The value zero is taken to mean the process group ID of the running
.Nm pgrep
or
.Nm pkill
command.
.It Fl i
Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and the supplied pattern.
.It Fl j Ar jail
Restrict matches to processes inside the specified jails.
The argument
.Ar jail
may be
.Dq Li any
to match processes in any jail,
.Dq Li none
to match processes not in jail,
or a comma-separated list of jail IDs or names.
.It Fl l
Long output.
For
.Nm pgrep ,
print the process name in addition to the process ID for each matching
process.
If used in conjunction with
.Fl f ,
print the process ID and the full argument list for each matching process.
For
.Nm pkill ,
display the kill command used for each process killed.
.It Fl n
Select only the newest (most recently started) of the matching processes.
.It Fl o
Select only the oldest (least recently started) of the matching processes.
.It Fl q
For
.Nm pgrep ,
Do not write anything to standard output.
.It Fl s Ar sid
Restrict matches to processes with a session ID in the comma-separated
list
.Ar sid .
The value zero is taken to mean the session ID of the running
.Nm pgrep
or
.Nm pkill
command.
.It Fl t Ar tty
Restrict matches to processes associated with a terminal in the
comma-separated list
.Ar tty .
Terminal names may be of the form
.Pa tty Ns Ar xx
or the shortened form
.Ar xx .
A single dash
.Pq Ql -
matches processes not associated with a terminal.
.It Fl u Ar euid
Restrict matches to processes with an effective user ID in the
comma-separated list
.Ar euid .
.It Fl v
Reverse the sense of the matching; display processes that do not match the
given criteria.
.It Fl x
Require an exact match of the process name, or argument list if
.Fl f
is given.
The default is to match any substring.
.It Fl Ns Ar signal
A non-negative decimal number or symbolic signal name specifying the signal
to be sent instead of the default
.Dv TERM .
This option is valid only when given as the first argument to
.Nm pkill .
.El
.Pp
If any
.Ar pattern
operands are specified, they are used as extended regular expressions to match
the command name or full argument list of each process.
If the
.Fl f
option is not specified, then the
.Ar pattern
will attempt to match the command name.
However, presently
.Fx
will only keep track of the first 19 characters of the command
name for each process.
Attempts to match any characters after the first 19 of a command name
will quietly fail.
.Pp
Note that a running
.Nm pgrep
or
.Nm pkill
process will never consider itself nor system processes (kernel threads) as
a potential match.
.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The Sun Solaris implementation utilised procfs to obtain process information.
This implementation utilises
.Xr kvm 3
instead.
On a live system,
.Xr kvm 3
uses
.Va kern.proc
MIB to obtain the list of processes, kernel memory through
.Pa /dev/kmem
is not accessed.
.Sh EXIT STATUS
The
.Nm pgrep
and
.Nm pkill
utilities
return one of the following values upon exit:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It 0
One or more processes were matched.
.It 1
No processes were matched.
.It 2
Invalid options were specified on the command line.
.It 3
An internal error occurred.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Show the pid of the process holding the
.Pa /tmp/.X0-lock
pid file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -F /tmp/.X0-lock
1211
.Ed
.Pp
Show the pid and the name of the process including kernel threads in the
search:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -lS vnlru
37 vnlru
.Ed
.Pp
Search for processes including kernel threads that match the extended regular
expression pattern:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -S 'crypto.*[2-3]'
20
19
6
5
.Ed
.Pp
Show long output for firefox processes:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -l firefox
1312 firefox
1309 firefox
1288 firefox
1280 firefox
1279 firefox
1278 firefox
1277 firefox
1264 firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Same as above but just showing the pid of the most recent process:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -n firefox
1312
.Ed
.Pp
Look for vim processes.
Match against the full argument list:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -f vim
44968
30790
.Ed
.Pp
Same as above but matching against the
.Ql list
word and showing the full argument list:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -f -l list
30790 vim list.txt
.Ed
.Pp
Send
.Va SIGSTOP
signal to processes that are an exact match:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pkill -SIGSTOP -f -x "vim list.txt"
.Ed
.Pp
Without
.Fl f
names over 19 characters will silently fail:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name &
[1] 36689
$

[1]+  Stopped                 vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name
$ pgrep "vim this"
$
.Ed
.Pp
Same as above using the
.Fl f
flag:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -f "vim this"
36689
.Ed
.Pp
Find the
.Xr top 1
command running in any jail:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -j any top
34498
.Ed
.Pp
Show all processes running in jail ID 58:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ pgrep -l -j58 '.*'
28397 pkg-static
28396 pkg-static
28255 sh
28254 make
.Ed
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
Historically the option
.Dq Fl j Li 0
means any jail, although in other utilities such as
.Xr ps 1
jail ID
.Li 0
has the opposite meaning, not in jail.
Therefore
.Dq Fl j Li 0
is deprecated, and its use is discouraged in favor of
.Dq Fl j Li any .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr killall 1 ,
.Xr ps 1 ,
.Xr flock 2 ,
.Xr kill 2 ,
.Xr sigaction 2 ,
.Xr kvm 3 ,
.Xr pidfile 3 ,
.Xr re_format 7
.\" Xr signal 7
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm pkill
and
.Nm pgrep
utilities
first appeared in
.Nx 1.6 .
They are modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun
Solaris 7.
They made their first appearance in
.Fx 5.3 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Andrew Doran Aq Mt ad@NetBSD.org