FreeBSD Manual Pages
KILL(2) Linux Programmer's Manual KILL(2) NAME kill - send signal to a process SYNOPSIS #include <sys/types.h> #include <signal.h> int kill(pid_t pid, int sig); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): kill(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 1 || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _POSIX_SOURCE DESCRIPTION The kill() system call can be used to send any signal to any process group or process. If pid is positive, then signal sig is sent to the process with the ID specified by pid. If pid equals 0, then sig is sent to every process in the process group of the calling process. If pid equals -1, then sig is sent to every process for which the call- ing process has permission to send signals, except for process 1 (init), but see below. If pid is less than -1, then sig is sent to every process in the process group whose ID is -pid. If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is still per- formed; this can be used to check for the existence of a process ID or process group ID. For a process to have permission to send a signal it must either be privileged (under Linux: have the CAP_KILL capability), or the real or effective user ID of the sending process must equal the real or saved set-user-ID of the target process. In the case of SIGCONT it suffices when the sending and receiving processes belong to the same session. (Historically, the rules were different; see NOTES.) RETURN VALUE On success (at least one signal was sent), zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately. ERRORS EINVAL An invalid signal was specified. EPERM The process does not have permission to send the signal to any of the target processes. ESRCH The pid or process group does not exist. Note that an existing process might be a zombie, a process which already committed termination, but has not yet been wait(2)ed for. CONFORMING TO SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. NOTES The only signals that can be sent to process ID 1, the init process, are those for which init has explicitly installed signal handlers. This is done to assure the system is not brought down accidentally. POSIX.1-2001 requires that kill(-1,sig) send sig to all processes that the calling process may send signals to, except possibly for some im- plementation-defined system processes. Linux allows a process to sig- nal itself, but on Linux the call kill(-1,sig) does not signal the calling process. POSIX.1-2001 requires that if a process sends a signal to itself, and the sending thread does not have the signal blocked, and no other thread has it unblocked or is waiting for it in sigwait(3), at least one unblocked signal must be delivered to the sending thread before the kill() returns. Linux notes Across different kernel versions, Linux has enforced different rules for the permissions required for an unprivileged process to send a sig- nal to another process. In kernels 1.0 to 1.2.2, a signal could be sent if the effective user ID of the sender matched effective user ID of the target, or the real user ID of the sender matched the real user ID of the target. From kernel 1.2.3 until 1.3.77, a signal could be sent if the effective user ID of the sender matched either the real or effective user ID of the target. The current rules, which conform to POSIX.1-2001, were adopted in kernel 1.3.78. BUGS In 2.6 kernels up to and including 2.6.7, there was a bug that meant that when sending signals to a process group, kill() failed with the error EPERM if the caller did not have permission to send the signal to any (rather than all) of the members of the process group. Notwith- standing this error return, the signal was still delivered to all of the processes for which the caller had permission to signal. SEE ALSO _exit(2), killpg(2), signal(2), tkill(2), exit(3), sigqueue(3), capa- bilities(7), credentials(7), signal(7) COLOPHON This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/. Linux 2013-09-17 KILL(2)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=kill&sektion=2&manpath=Debian+8.1.0>