## NAME

kill - send a signal to a process

## SYNOPSIS

kill [options] <pid> [...]

## DESCRIPTION

The default signal for kill is TERM. Use -l or -L to list available signals. Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0. Alternate signals may be specified in three ways: -9, -SIGKILLor -KILL .Negative PID values may be used to choose whole process groups; see the PGID column in ps command output. A PID of -1 is special; it indicates all processes except the kill process itself and init.

## OPTIONS

<pid> [...] Send signal to every <pid> listed.

-<signal>

-s <signal>

--signal <signal> Specify the signal to be sent. The signal can be specified by using name or number. The behavior of signals is explained in signal (7)manual page.

-l, --list [signal] List signal names. This option has optional argument, which will convert signal number to signal name, or other way round.

-L, \ --tableList signal names in a nice table.

## NOTES

Your shell (command line interpreter) may have a built-in kill command. You may need to run the command described here as /bin/kill to solve the conflict.

## EXAMPLES

kill -9 -1 Kill all processes you can kill.

kill -l 11 Translate number 11 into a signal name.

kill -L List the available signal choices in a nice table.

kill 123 543 2341 3453 Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.

## SEE ALSO

kill (2), killall (1), nice (1), pkill (1), renice (1), signal (7), skill (1)

## STANDARDS

This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-specific.

## AUTHOR

Albert Cahalan

wrote kill in 1999 to replace a bsdutils one that was not standards compliant. The util-linux one might also work correctly.

## REPORTING BUGS

Please send bug reports to