usr.bin/killall/killall.1

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.Dd June 4, 2020
.Dt KILLALL 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm killall
.Nd kill processes by name
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl delmsvz
.Op Fl help
.Op Fl I
.Op Fl j Ar jail
.Op Fl u Ar user
.Op Fl t Ar tty
.Op Fl c Ar procname
.Op Fl Ar SIGNAL
.Op Ar procname ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility 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 ".Fl c Ar procname"
.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 e
Use the effective user ID instead of the (default) real user ID for matching
processes specified with the
.Fl u
option.
.It Fl help
Give a help on the command usage and exit.
.It Fl I
Request confirmation before attempting to signal each
process.
.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 sensitive) 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 Ar 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
.Dq Li SIG ) ,
or numerically.
.It Fl j Ar jail
Kill processes in the specified
.Ar jail .
.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
Limit potentially matching processes to those matching
the specified
.Ar procname .
.It Fl q
Suppress error message if no processes are matched.
.It Fl z
Do not skip zombies.
This should not have any effect except to print a few error messages
if there are zombie processes that match the specified pattern.
.El
.Sh ALL PROCESSES
Sending a signal to all processes with the given UID
is already supported by
.Xr kill 1 .
So use
.Xr kill 1
for this job (e.g.\&
.Dq Li "kill -TERM -1"
or as root
.Dq Li "echo kill -TERM -1 | su -m <user>" ) .
.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
This
.Fx
implementation of
.Nm
has completely different semantics as compared to the traditional
.Ux
System V behavior of
.Nm .
The latter will kill all processes that the current user is able to
kill, and is intended to be used by the system shutdown process only.
.Sh EXIT STATUS
The
.Nm
utility exits 0 if some processes have been found and
signalled successfully.
Otherwise, a status of 1 will be
returned.
.Sh EXAMPLES
Send
.Dv SIGTERM
to all firefox processes:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Send
.Dv SIGTERM
to firefox processes belonging to
.Va USER :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -u ${USER} firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Stop all firefox processes:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -SIGSTOP firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Resume firefox processes:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -SIGCONT firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Show what would be done to firefox processes, but do not actually signal them:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -s firefox
.Ed
.Pp
Send
.Dv SIGKILL
to csh process running inside jail ID 282:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -9 -j282 csh
.Ed
.Pp
Send
.Dv SIGTERM
to all processes matching provided pattern (like vim and vimdiff):
.Bd -literal -offset indent
killall -m 'vim*'
.Ed
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
Diagnostic messages will only be printed if requested by
.Fl d
options.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr pkill 1 ,
.Xr sysctl 3 ,
.Xr jail 8
.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 .