+5 votes
213 views
Kill process in Linux from the console

in Guides by (552k points)
reopened | 213 views

1 Answer

+3 votes
Best answer

Knowing the processes and how they identify with the PID.
Commands and tools to kill processes in Linux.
Other tools, references and final words.
Parent processes and child processes in Linux.
Kill processes by knowing their name with the pkill and killall commands.

Whether we are novice or advanced users, sooner or later we will find some rebel program or process that we will have to end by force. In Windows we are used to using the task manager to finish processes. Today we are going to focus on how to kill a process in Linux , for which we will use the console.

image

The terminal is a versatile tool in Gnu / Linux environments and we should not call it complicated, we just need a little practice. Killing a process manually is something very common and does not have to be dangerous if we do it correctly. Although we must bear in mind that if we kill processes on which the proper functioning of the operating system depends, this may have unexpected consequences or cause a critical failure.

Knowing the processes and how they identify with the PID.

A process in Linux is nothing more than a program that is running and has been assigned an identifier known as PID. The PID is an abbreviation for Process ID , which refers to the process identifier. Each process will have a unique PID.

To obtain a detailed list of all processes , we can execute the ps aux command in the terminal. Within the list of processes, we will see that one of the columns corresponds to the PID, which is an integer numerical value.

I will not explain in detail the meaning of each column, but I will remind you that you can link the previous command with grep to quickly find some process. For example, we can use ps aux | grep apache ps aux | grep apache to locate the information of the Apache server process.

Parent processes and child processes in Linux.

We must also keep in mind that processes can execute other processes , called child processes. The child processes have their own PID, but at the same time they are assigned the PPID identifier (Parent Process Identifier) , which indicates the PID of the parent process.

Taking into account everything said about parent processes and child processes, we must also know the ps -ef command that shows us the PPID values.

Commands and tools to kill processes in Linux.

Let's start talking about the kill command, which is usually the most common when stopping processes. The kill command can take as an argument the signal that will be sent to the process to kill, stop, resume or suspend it. The names of these signals with their corresponding numerical value are as follows:

  • SIGINT - 2 : This signal interrupts a process, equivalent to pressing the key combination Ctrl + C
  • SIGKILL - 9 : Kills a process permanently (cannot be recovered) .
  • SIGTERM - 15 : interrupts a process just like SIGINT, but this signal can be interpreted by the process. When we use the kill command without specifying any signal, this is the one used by default.
  • SIGCOUNT - 18 : Resumes a process that has been stopped.
  • SIGSTOP - 19 : stops a process, it is equivalent to pressing the key combination Ctrl + Z

The above are the most common signals, but you can check the complete list with the kill -l command.

image

If what we want is to kill a process immediately, the command would be kill -9 PID or its equivalent kill -SIGKILL PID . Use the one that is easier for you to remember.

Kill processes by knowing their name with the pkill and killall commands.

If we know the name of the process instead of its PID, we can use the pkill command or the killall command. These two commands are similar, but not the same.

Following the previous example, we could kill a process with pkill as follows: pkill -9 nombreproceso .

Similarly, it is applicable for the killall command with the following example: killall -9 nombreproceso .

Here we can ask the question of what happens when there are several processes that have the same name and one of these commands is executed . The answer is simple, this command acts on all processes that have the specified name.

Differences between pkill and killall.

The pkill command uses a pattern to find the process name match, while killall searches for the exact match. To understand this better, if we have a process whose name is apache2 and we use the pkill -9 apache command, we will kill the apache2 process. If we use the killall -9 apache command, the apache2 process will not stop (because killall needs the exact name of the process).

Other tools, references and final words.

I hope this tutorial has helped you and now you know a little more closely the possibilities offered by the console in Linux.

I must remind you that in the blog we talked earlier about the fkill-cli tool, which allows you to kill processes interactively. There is another very similar tool but written with the Go language , whose name is Gkill .

I would also like to take this opportunity to refer to a forum article that talks about how to stop stopped jobs (zombie processes in the background) .


by (3.5m points)

Related questions

+5 votes
1 answer
+3 votes
1 answer
asked Aug 9, 2019 in Guides by backtothefuture (552k points) | 252 views
+4 votes
1 answer
+3 votes
1 answer
+5 votes
1 answer
Sponsored articles cost $40 per post. You can contact us via Feedback

Most popular questions within the last 30 days

10,659 questions
10,791 answers
510 comments
3 users