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PKILL(1) General Commands Manual PKILL(1) NAME pgrep, pkill -- find or signal processes by name SYNOPSIS pgrep [-LSafilnoqvx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-M core] [-N system] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-c class] [-d delim] [-g pgrp] [-j jail] [-s sid] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ... pkill [-signal] [-ILafilnovx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-M core] [-N system] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-c class] [-g pgrp] [-j jail] [-s sid] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ... DESCRIPTION The 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, excluding itself and all direct ancestors unless the -a option is specified. The pkill command searches the process table on the running system and signals all processes that match the criteria given on the command line, excluding itself and all direct ancestors unless the -a option is specified. The following options are available: -F pidfile Restrict matches to a process whose PID is stored in the pidfile file. -G gid Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in the comma-separated list gid. -I Request confirmation before attempting to signal each process. -L The pidfile file given for the -F option must be locked with the flock(2) syscall or created with pidfile(3). -M core Extract values associated with the name list from the spec- ified core instead of the currently running system. -N system Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from. -P ppid Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID in the comma-separated list ppid. -S Search also in system processes (kernel threads). -U uid Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-separated list uid. -d delim Specify a delimiter to be printed between each process ID. The default is a newline. This option can only be used with the pgrep command. -a Include process ancestors in the match list. By default, the current pgrep or pkill process and all of its ancestors are excluded (unless -v is used). Note that the -a option will not "unhide" the pgrep or pkill process itself, even with -v. -c class Restrict matches to processes running with specified login class class. -f Match against full argument lists. The default is to match against process names. -g pgrp Restrict matches to processes with a process group ID in the comma-separated list pgrp. The value zero is taken to mean the process group ID of the running pgrep or pkill command. -i Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and the supplied pattern. -j jail Restrict matches to processes inside the specified jails. The argument jail may be "any" to match processes in any jail, "none" to match processes not in jail, or a comma- separated list of jail IDs or names. -l Long output. For pgrep, print the process name in addition to the process ID for each matching process. If used in conjunction with -f, print the process ID and the full ar- gument list for each matching process. For pkill, display the kill command used for each process killed. -n Select only the newest (most recently started) of the matching processes. -o Select only the oldest (least recently started) of the matching processes. -q For pgrep, Do not write anything to standard output. -s sid Restrict matches to processes with a session ID in the comma-separated list sid. The value zero is taken to mean the session ID of the running pgrep or pkill command. -t tty Restrict matches to processes associated with a terminal in the comma-separated list tty. Terminal names may be of the form ttyxx or the shortened form xx. A single dash (`-') matches processes not associated with a terminal. -u euid Restrict matches to processes with an effective user ID in the comma-separated list euid. -v Reverse the sense of the matching; display processes that do not match the given criteria. -x Require an exact match of the process name, or argument list if -f is given. The default is to match any sub- string. -signal A non-negative decimal number or symbolic signal name spec- ifying the signal to be sent instead of the default TERM. This option is valid only when given as the first argument to pkill. If any pattern operands are specified, they are used as extended regu- lar expressions to match the command name or full argument list of each process. If the -f option is not specified, then the pattern will at- tempt to match the command name. However, presently FreeBSD 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 com- mand name will quietly fail. Note that a running pgrep or pkill process will never consider itself nor system processes (kernel threads) as a potential match. IMPLEMENTATION NOTES The Sun Solaris implementation utilised procfs to obtain process infor- mation. This implementation utilises kvm(3) instead. On a live sys- tem, kvm(3) uses kern.proc MIB to obtain the list of processes, kernel memory through /dev/kmem is not accessed. EXIT STATUS The pgrep and pkill utilities return one of the following values upon exit: 0 One or more processes were matched. 1 No processes were matched. 2 Invalid options were specified on the command line. 3 An internal error occurred. EXAMPLES Show the pid of the process holding the /tmp/.X0-lock pid file: $ pgrep -F /tmp/.X0-lock 1211 Show the pid and the name of the process including kernel threads in the search: $ pgrep -lS vnlru 37 vnlru Search for processes including kernel threads that match the extended regular expression pattern: $ pgrep -S 'crypto.*[2-3]' 20 19 6 5 Show long output for firefox processes: $ pgrep -l firefox 1312 firefox 1309 firefox 1288 firefox 1280 firefox 1279 firefox 1278 firefox 1277 firefox 1264 firefox Same as above but just showing the pid of the most recent process: $ pgrep -n firefox 1312 Look for vim processes. Match against the full argument list: $ pgrep -f vim 44968 30790 Same as above but matching against the `list' word and showing the full argument list: $ pgrep -f -l list 30790 vim list.txt Send SIGSTOP signal to processes that are an exact match: $ pkill -SIGSTOP -f -x "vim list.txt" Without -f names over 19 characters will silently fail: $ vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name & [1] 36689 $ [1]+ Stopped vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name $ pgrep "vim this" $ Same as above using the -f flag: $ pgrep -f "vim this" 36689 Find the top(1) command running in any jail: $ pgrep -j any top 34498 Show all processes running in jail ID 58: $ pgrep -l -j58 '.*' 28397 pkg-static 28396 pkg-static 28255 sh 28254 make COMPATIBILITY Historically the option "-j 0" means any jail, although in other utili- ties such as ps(1) jail ID 0 has the opposite meaning, not in jail. Therefore "-j 0" is deprecated, and its use is discouraged in favor of "-j any". SEE ALSO kill(1), killall(1), ps(1), flock(2), kill(2), sigaction(2), kvm(3), pidfile(3), re_format(7) HISTORY The pkill and pgrep utilities first appeared in NetBSD 1.6. They are modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7. They made their first appearance in FreeBSD 5.3. AUTHORS Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org> FreeBSD 15.0 June 24, 2025 PKILL(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | IMPLEMENTATION NOTES | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS
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