Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
KILLALL(1)		    General Commands Manual		    KILLALL(1)

NAME
       killall -- kill processes by name

SYNOPSIS
       killall	 [-delmsvz]   [-help]  [-I]  [-j  jail]	 [-u  user]  [-t  tty]
	       [-c procname] [-SIGNAL] [procname ...]

DESCRIPTION
       The killall utility kills processes selected by name, as	opposed	to the
       selection by PID	as done	by kill(1).  By	default, it will send  a  TERM
       signal  to  all	processes  with	 a real	UID identical to the caller of
       killall that match the name procname.  The  super-user  is  allowed  to
       kill any	process.

       The options are as follows:

       -d	    Be	more  verbose about what will be done, but do not send
		    any	signal.	 The total number of user  processes  and  the
		    real  user ID is shown.  A list of the processes that will
		    be sent the	signal will be printed,	or a message  indicat-
		    ing	that no	matching processes have	been found.

       -e	    Use	 the  effective	 user ID instead of the	(default) real
		    user ID for	matching processes specified with the  -u  op-
		    tion.

       -help	    Give a help	on the command usage and exit.

       -I	    Request  confirmation  before  attempting  to  signal each
		    process.

       -l	    List the names of the available signals and	exit, like  in
		    kill(1).

       -m	    Match  the argument	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.

       -v	    Be verbose about what will be done.

       -s	    Same as -v,	but do not send	any signal.

       -SIGNAL	    Send  a different signal instead of	the default TERM.  The
		    signal may be specified either as a	name (with or  without
		    a leading "SIG"), or numerically.

       -j jail	    Kill processes in the specified jail.

       -u user	    Limit potentially matching processes to those belonging to
		    the	specified user.

       -t tty	    Limit  potentially	matching processes to those running on
		    the	specified tty.

       -c procname  Limit potentially matching processes to those matching the
		    specified procname.

       -q	    Suppress error message if no processes are matched.

       -z	    Do not skip	zombies.  This should not have any effect  ex-
		    cept  to  print  a	few error messages if there are	zombie
		    processes that match the specified pattern.

ALL PROCESSES
       Sending a signal	to all processes with the given	UID  is	 already  sup-
       ported  by  kill(1).  So	use kill(1) for	this job (e.g. "kill -TERM -1"
       or as root "echo	kill -TERM -1 |	su -m <user>").

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
       This FreeBSD implementation of killall has completely different	seman-
       tics  as	compared to the	traditional Unix System	V behavior of killall.
       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.

EXIT STATUS
       The  killall utility exits 0 if some processes have been	found and sig-
       nalled successfully.  Otherwise,	a status of 1 will be returned.

EXAMPLES
       Send SIGTERM to all firefox processes:

	     killall firefox

       Send SIGTERM to firefox processes belonging to USER:

	     killall -u	${USER}	firefox

       Stop all	firefox	processes:

	     killall -SIGSTOP firefox

       Resume firefox processes:

	     killall -SIGCONT firefox

       Show what would be done to firefox processes, but do not	actually  sig-
       nal them:

	     killall -s	firefox

       Send SIGKILL to csh process running inside jail ID 282:

	     killall -9	-j282 csh

       Send  SIGTERM  to all processes matching	provided pattern (like vim and
       vimdiff):

	     killall -m	'vim*'

DIAGNOSTICS
       Diagnostic messages will	only be	printed	if the -d flag is used.

SEE ALSO
       kill(1),	pkill(1), sysctl(3), jail(8)

HISTORY
       The killall command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.  It	has been modeled after
       the killall command as available	on other platforms.

AUTHORS
       The killall program was originally written in Perl and was  contributed
       by Wolfram Schneider, this manual page has been written by Jorg Wunsch.
       The  current  version of	killall	was rewritten in C by Peter Wemm using
       sysctl(3).

FreeBSD	14.3			 June 27, 2020			    KILLALL(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=killall&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+14.3-RELEASE+and+Ports>

home | help