PKILL(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual PKILL(1)NAME
pgrep, pkill - find or signal processes by name
SYNOPSIS
pgrep [-flnovx] [-d delim] [-G gid] [-g pgrp] [-P ppid] [-s sid] [-t tty]
[-U uid] [-u euid] [pattern ...]
pkill [-signal] [-fnovx] [-G gid] [-g pgrp] [-P ppid] [-s sid] [-t tty]
[-U uid] [-u euid] [pattern ...]
DESCRIPTION
The pgrep command searches the process table on the running system and
prints the process IDs of all processes that match the criteria given on
the command line.
The pkill command searches the process table on the running system and
signals all processes that match the criteria given on the command line.
The following options are available:
-d delim
Specify a delimiter to be printed between each process ID. The
default is a newline. This option can only be used with the
pgrep command.
-f Match against full argument lists. The default is to match
against process names.
-G gid Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in the comma-
separated list gid.
-g pgrp
Restrict matches to processes with a process group ID in the
comma-separated list pgrp. The value zero is taken to mean the
process group ID of the running pgrep or pkill command.
-l Long output. Print the process name in addition to the process
ID for each matching process. If used in conjunction with -f,
print the process ID and the full argument list for each matching
process. This option can only be used with the pgrep command.
-n Match only the most recently created (newest) process, if any.
Cannot be used in conjunction with -o.
-o Match only the least recently created (oldest) process, if any.
Cannot be used in conjunction with -n.
-P ppid
Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID in the
comma-separated list ppid.
-s sid Restrict matches to processes with a session ID in the comma-
separated list sid. The value zero is taken to mean the session
ID of the running pgrep or pkill command.
-t tty Restrict matches to processes associated with a terminal in the
comma-separated list tty. Terminal names may be of the form
`ttyxx' or the shortened form `xx'. A single dash (`-') matches
processes not associated with a terminal.
-U uid Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-
separated list uid.
-u euid
Restrict matches to processes with an effective user ID in the
comma-separated list euid.
-v Reverse the sense of the matching; display or signal processes
that do not match the given criteria.
-x Require an exact match of the process name, or argument list if
-f is given. The default is to match any substring.
-signal
A non-negative decimal number or symbolic signal name specifying
the signal to be sent instead of the default TERM. This option
is valid only when given as the first argument to pkill.
If any pattern operands are specified, they are used as regular
expressions to match the command name or, if -f is specified, the full
argument list of each process. However, presently OpenBSD will only keep
track of the first 16 characters of the command name for each process.
Attempts to match any characters after the first 16 of a command name
will silently fail.
Note that a running pgrep or pkill process will never consider itself or
system processes (kernel threads) as a potential match.
EXIT STATUS
The pgrep and pkill utilities exit with one of the following values:
0 One or more processes were matched.
1 No processes were matched.
2 Invalid options were specified on the command line.
3 An internal error occurred.
SEE ALSOgrep(1), kill(1), ps(1), kill(2), sigaction(2), re_format(7)HISTORY
pkill and pgrep first appeared in OpenBSD 3.5. They are modelled after
utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7.
AUTHORS
Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>.
OpenBSD 4.9 September 29, 2010 OpenBSD 4.9