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What is difference between killall and kill command?
The main difference between these tools is that kill terminates processes based on Process ID number (PID), while the killall and pkill commands terminate running processes based on their names and other attributes.
What does killall command do?
The killall command – The killall command in Linux is a utility command used for killing any running process on the system based on a given name. This command will terminate the processes forcibly when a specified name matches. The easiest way to kill a bunch of processes altogether is through the killall command.
What signal is killall?
SIGTERM
Description. kill ends a process by sending it a signal. The default signal is SIGTERM. kill is a built-in shell command.
What does killall mean in Linux?
The killall command cancels all processes that you started, except those producing the killall process. This command provides a convenient means of canceling all processes created by the shell that you control. If no signal is specified, the killall command sends a SIGKILL signal.
How does the-I option in killall work?
The -i option interactively asks the user for confirmation before killing each process. This makes it possible to kill only selective instances of a program, as is done routinely with kill. If a user is running multiple instances of killall on the system, a killall process can terminate all of them except for itself.
When to use killall to kill a command?
A killall process never kills itself (but may kill other killall processes). 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.
How to choose the signal killall sends to process?
Suppose you want the killall command to ask for user permissions before it kills a process, then you can use the -i command-line option. This will make the killall operation interactive. Q4. How to choose the signal killall sends to process? By default, it’s the SIGTERM signal that killall sends to processes.
Can a killall process terminate all processes except for itself?
If a user is running multiple instances of killall on the system, a killall process can terminate all of them except for itself. That is, a killall process never kills itself. An ordinary user is only able to terminate its own processes, and thus it is not necessary to be concerned about the processes of other users on a multi-user system.