https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Sending_signal_to_Processes
kill - send a signal to a process
The default signal for kill is TERM. To list available signals, enter:
kill -l
Sample outputs:
1) SIGHUP 2) SIGINT 3) SIGQUIT 4) SIGILL
5) SIGTRAP 6) SIGABRT 7) SIGBUS 8) SIGFPE
9) SIGKILL 10) SIGUSR1 11) SIGSEGV 12) SIGUSR2
13) SIGPIPE 14) SIGALRM 15) SIGTERM 16) SIGSTKFLT
17) SIGCHLD 18) SIGCONT 19) SIGSTOP 20) SIGTSTP
21) SIGTTIN 22) SIGTTOU 23) SIGURG 24) SIGXCPU
25) SIGXFSZ 26) SIGVTALRM 27) SIGPROF 28) SIGWINCH
29) SIGIO 30) SIGPWR 31) SIGSYS 34) SIGRTMIN
35) SIGRTMIN+1 36) SIGRTMIN+2 37) SIGRTMIN+3 38) SIGRTMIN+4
39) SIGRTMIN+5 40) SIGRTMIN+6 41) SIGRTMIN+7 42) SIGRTMIN+8
43) SIGRTMIN+9 44) SIGRTMIN+10 45) SIGRTMIN+11 46) SIGRTMIN+12
47) SIGRTMIN+13 48) SIGRTMIN+14 49) SIGRTMIN+15 50) SIGRTMAX-14
51) SIGRTMAX-13 52) SIGRTMAX-12 53) SIGRTMAX-11 54) SIGRTMAX-10
55) SIGRTMAX-9 56) SIGRTMAX-8 57) SIGRTMAX-7 58) SIGRTMAX-6
59) SIGRTMAX-5 60) SIGRTMAX-4 61) SIGRTMAX-3 62) SIGRTMAX-2
63) SIGRTMAX-1 64) SIGRTMAX
kill command Examples
The kill command can send all of the above signals to commands and process. However, commands only give response if they are programmed to recognize those signals. Particularly useful signals include:
- SIGHUP (1) - Hangup detected on controlling terminal or death of controlling process.
- SIGINT (2) - Interrupt from keyboard.
- SIGKILL (9) - Kill signal i.e. kill running process.
- SIGSTOP (19) - Stop process.
- SIGCONT (18) - Continue process if stopped.
To send a kill signal to PID # 1234 use:
kill -9 1234
OR
kill -KILL 1234
OR
kill -SIGKILL 1234
killall - kill processes by name
killall sends a signal to all processes running any of the specified commands . If no signal name is specified, SIGTERM is sent. To terminate all firefox process (child and parent), enter:
killall processName
killall firefox-bin
To send a KILL signal to firefox, enter:
killall -s SIGKILL firefox-bin
pkill - kill process
The pkill command is another command with additional options to kill process by its name, user name, group name, terminal, UID, EUID, and GID. It will send the specified signal (by default SIGTERM) to each process instead of listing them on stdout. To send a kill signal to php-cgi process, enter:
pkill -KILL php-cgi
The above example will kill all users php-cgi process. However, -u option will kill only processes whose effective user ID is set to vivek:
pkill -KILL -u vivek php-cgi
Make sshd reread its configuration file, enter:
pkill -HUP sshd