KILLALL(1)                User Commands                KILLALL(1)

NAME
       killall - kill processes by name

SYNOPSIS
       killall [-egiqvw] [-signal] name ...
       killall -l
       killall -V

DESCRIPTION
       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 by
       number (e.g. -1). Signal 0 (check if a process exists) can
       only be specified by number.

       If  the  command name contains a slash (/), processes exe-
       cuting that particular file will be selected for  killing,
       independent of their name.

       killall  returns  a non-zero return code if no process has
       been killed for any of the listed commands.  If  at  least
       one  process  has  been  killed  for each command, killall
       returns zero.

       A killall process never kills itself (but may  kill  other
       killall processes).

OPTIONS
       -e     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 addi-
              tion to -e,

       -g     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     Interactively  ask for confirmation before killing.

       -l     List all known signal names.

       -q     Do not complain of no processes were killed.

       -v     Report if the signal was successfully sent.

       -V     Display version information.

       -w     Wait for  all  killed  processes  to  die.  killall
              checks  once  per  second if any of the killed pro-
              cesses 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  pro-
              cess stays in zombie state.

FILES
       /proc     location of the proc file system

KNOWN BUGS
       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.

AUTHOR
       Werner Almesberger <Werner.Almesberger@epfl.ch>

SEE ALSO
       kill(1), fuser(1), pidof(1), ps(1), kill(2)

Linux                      Nov 1, 1998                          1