snippetbashTip

kill — Send a signal to a process, usually related to stopping the process. All signals except for SIGKILL

Submitted by: @import:tldr-pages·Mar 2, 2026·

Viewed 0 times

usuallyrelatedsendcommandprocessclisignalkill

Problem

How to use the kill command: Send a signal to a process, usually related to stopping the process. All signals except for SIGKILL and SIGSTOP can be intercepted by the process to perform a clean exit. More information: <https://manned.org/kill.1posix>.

Solution

kill — Send a signal to a process, usually related to stopping the process. All signals except for SIGKILL and SIGSTOP can be intercepted by the process to perform a clean exit. More information: <https://manned.org/kill.1posix>.

Terminate a program using the default SIGTERM (terminate) signal:

kill {{process_id}}

List available signal names (to be used without the SIG prefix):

kill -l

Terminate a program using the SIGHUP (hang up) signal. Many daemons will reload instead of terminating:

kill {{[-1|-HUP]}} {{process_id}}

Terminate a program using the SIGINT (interrupt) signal. This is typically initiated by the user pressing <Ctrl c>:

kill {{[-2|-INT]}} {{process_id}}

Signal the operating system to immediately terminate a program (which gets no chance to capture the signal):

kill {{[-9|-KILL]}} {{process_id}}

Signal the operating system to pause a program until a SIGCONT ("continue") signal is received:

kill {{[-19|-STOP]}} {{process_id}}

Send a SIGUSR1 signal to all processes with the given GID (group id):

kill -SIGUSR1 -{{group_id}}

Code Snippets

Terminate a program using the default SIGTERM (terminate) signal

kill {{process_id}}

List available signal names (to be used without the `SIG` prefix)

kill -l

Terminate a program using the SIGHUP (hang up) signal. Many daemons will reload instead of terminating

kill {{[-1|-HUP]}} {{process_id}}

Terminate a program using the SIGINT (interrupt) signal. This is typically initiated by the user pressing `<Ctrl c>`

kill {{[-2|-INT]}} {{process_id}}

Signal the operating system to immediately terminate a program (which gets no chance to capture the signal)

kill {{[-9|-KILL]}} {{process_id}}

Context

tldr-pages: common/kill

Revisions (0)

No revisions yet.