killall(1) — Linux manual page

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, --list
       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. The
              default is to match against all namespaces.

       -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
              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 integer
       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 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-11-14.)  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                         2023-06-17                     KILLALL(1)

Pages that refer to this page: fuser(1)kill(1@@procps-ng)pgrep(1)pmsignal(1)skill(1)start-stop-daemon(8)