NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | KNOWN BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

KILLALL(1)                      User Commands                     KILLALL(1)

NAME         top

       killall - kill processes by name

SYNOPSIS         top

       killall [-Z, --context pattern] [-e, --exact] [-g, --process-group]
       [-i, --interactive] [-n, --ns PID] [-o, --older-than TIME]
       [-q, --quiet] [-r, --regexp] [-s, --signal SIGNAL, -SIGNAL]
       [-u, --user user] [-v, --verbose] [-w, --wait] [-y, --younger-than
       TIME] [-I, --ignore-case] [-V, --version] [--] name ...
       killall -l
       killall -V, --version

DESCRIPTION         top

       killall sends a signal to all processes running any of the specified
       commands.  If no signal name is specified, SIGTERM is sent.
       Signals can be specified either by name (e.g.  -HUP or -SIGHUP) or by
       number (e.g.  -1) or by option -s.
       If the command name is not regular expression (option -r) and
       contains a slash (/), processes executing that particular file will
       be selected for killing, independent of their name.
       killall returns a zero return code if at least one process has been
       killed for each listed command, or no commands were listed and at
       least one process matched the -u and -Z search criteria.  killall
       returns non-zero otherwise.
       A killall process never kills itself (but may kill other killall
       processes).

OPTIONS         top

       -e, --exact
              Require an exact match for very long names.  If a command name
              is longer than 15 characters, the full name may be unavailable
              (i.e.  it is swapped out).  In this case, killall will kill
              everything that matches within the first 15 characters.  With
              -e, such entries are skipped.  killall prints a message for
              each skipped entry if -v is specified in addition to -e,
       -I, --ignore-case
              Do case insensitive process name match.
       -g, --process-group
              Kill the process group to which the process belongs.  The kill
              signal is only sent once per group, even if multiple processes
              belonging to the same process group were found.
       -i, --interactive
              Interactively ask for confirmation before killing.
       -l, --list
              List all known signal names.
       -n, --ns
              Match against the PID namespace of the given PID. Use 0 to
              match against all namespaces. The default is to match against
              the current PID namespace.
       -o, --older-than
              Match only processes that are older (started before) the time
              specified.  The time is specified as a float then a unit.  The
              units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes, hours, days,
              weeks, Months and years respectively.
       -q, --quiet
              Do not complain if no processes were killed.
       -r, --regexp
              Interpret process name pattern as a POSIX extended regular
              expression, per regex(3).
       -s, --signal, -SIGNAL
              Send this signal instead of SIGTERM.
       -u, --user
              Kill only processes the specified user owns.  Command names
              are optional.
       -v, --verbose
              Report if the signal was successfully sent.
       -V, --version
              Display version information.
       -w, --wait
              Wait for all killed processes to die.  killall checks once per
              second if any of the killed processes still exist and only
              returns if none are left.  Note that killall may wait forever
              if the signal was ignored, had no effect, or if the process
              stays in zombie state.
       -y, --younger-than
              Match only processes that are younger (started after) the time
              specified.  The time is specified as a float then a unit.  The
              units are s,m,h,d,w,M,y for seconds, minutes, hours, days,
              weeks, Months and years respectively.
       -Z, --context
              (SELinux Only) Specify security context: kill only processes
              having security context that match with given extended regular
              expression pattern.  Must precede other arguments on the
              command line.  Command names are optional.

FILES         top

       /proc  location of the proc file system

KNOWN BUGS         top

       Killing by file only works for executables that are kept open during
       execution, i.e. impure executables can't be killed this way.
       Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on
       non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
       killall -w doesn't detect if a process disappears and is replaced by
       a new process with the same PID between scans.
       If processes change their name, killall may not be able to match them
       correctly.
       killall has a limit of names that can be specified on the command
       line.  This figure is the size of an unsigned long multiplied by 8.
       For most 32 bit systems the limit is 32 and similarly for a 64 bit
       system the limit is usually 64.

SEE ALSO         top

       kill(1), fuser(1), pgrep(1), pidof(1), pkill(1), ps(1), kill(2),
       regex(3).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the psmisc (Small utilities that use the /proc
       filesystem) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc/issues⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
psmisc                           2017-06-12                       KILLALL(1)

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