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HOW TO KILL A PROCESS IN LINUX FROM COMMAND LINE
Ravi SaiveLast Updated: December 14, 2023 Read Time: 5 minsCategories Linux
Commands 40 Comments
In Linux, killing a process refers to terminating or stopping the execution of a
running program. Each running process is assigned a unique identifier number
known as the Process ID (PID), which helps the system to keep track of currently
active processes.
In this article, we’ll find out about the Linux kill process and how to find and
terminate a process using different tools and commands in Linux.
WHAT IS THE LINUX PROCESS
In simple terms, a process is like a program that’s currently running on a
system, and each process has its own special ID (PID) number. However, sometimes
a running program, or process, can misbehave or might stop responding or use up
too much of the system resources.
When that happens, we need to stop or “kill” the process and this is where the
kill command comes in handy.
WHAT IS KILL COMMAND
The “kill” command is a crucial utility that allows users to send signals (stop
or terminate) to currently running processes, instructing them to gracefully
exit or forcefully terminate.
The kill command is useful when you need to manage and control the activities of
different programs on your Linux system such as:
* To stop any automated process.
* To stop a process that has been started by accident.
* To stop a process that uses too much memory.
* To forcefully terminate any running process in Linux.
* To stop a process running in the background.
Using the kill command from /usr/bin provides you with some extra features to
kill a process by process name using pkill, which identifies processes by their
names.
HOW TO FIND PROCESS ID OR PROCESS NAME
Before terminating a running process, it’s essential to identify its Process ID
(PID) or name using the following ps command that displays information about all
running processes on the system with their PID (process ID) and other
information.
$ ps -ef
List All Running Processes
If you want to find a specific process name PID, you can use a grep command that
will list all processes running on the system and filter the results to show
only those containing the term “mariadb“.
ps -ef | grep mariadb
Alternatively, you can directly find the PID of a process by name using the
pgrep command as shown.
pgrep mariadb
Find Process PID
HOW TO KILL A PROCESS IN LINUX
Before you kill, stop, or terminate a process, think about permissions. If
you’re a root user, you can stop any process, but if you are a normal user, you
need to add a “sudo” before the command or switch to a root with “su” to use the
termination command.
The common syntax for the kill command is:
kill [signal or option] PID(s)
OR
sudo kill [signal or option] PID(s)
For a kill command a Signal Name could be:
Kill Command Signals
Clearly from the behavior above:
* SIGTERM is the default and safest way to kill a process.
* SIGHUP is a less secure way of killing a process than SIGTERM.
* SIGKILL is the most unsafe way among the above three, to kill a process that
terminates a process without saving.
In Linux, there are different signals you can use to stop, end, or pause
processes. You can list all available kill signals with their names and
corresponding numbers using the following command, which will list
kill -l
While there are multiple available signals, but in most cases we only use
SIGKILL (9) and SIGTERM (15).
List Kill Command Signals
To kill a process, we need to know the Process ID of a process. A Process is an
instance of a program. Every time a program starts, automatically a unique PID
is generated for that process.
Every Process in Linux has a pid. The first process that starts when the Linux
System is booted is the – init process, hence it is assigned a value of ‘1‘ in
most cases.
[ You might also like: Learn About Processes in Linux [Comprehensive Guide] ]
Init is the master process and can not be killed this way, which ensures that
the master process doesn’t get killed accidentally. Init decides and allows
itself to be killed, where kill is merely a request for a shutdown.
[ You might also like: How to Find Top Running Processes by Memory Usage ]
Before we step ahead and execute a kill command, some important points to be
noted:
* A user can kill all his processes.
* A user can not kill another user’s process.
* A user can not kill processes the System is using.
* A root user can kill the system-level process and the process of any user.
To kill the mariadb process PID, use the kill command as shown.
kill -9 3383
The above command will kill the process having pid=3383, where PID is a
Numerical Value of the process.
Another way to perform the same function can be rewritten as.
kill -SIGTERM 3383
Similarly ‘kill -9 PID‘ is similar to ‘kill -SIGKILL PID‘ and vice-versa.
To confirm that the process has terminated, you can again use the ps command.
ps -ef | grep mariadb
Kill Linux Process with PID
HOW TO KILL MULTIPLE PROCESSES IN LINUX
To terminate multiple processes in Linux using their Process IDs (PIDs), you can
use the kill command in combination with the relevant PID numbers.
First, identify the PIDs of the processes you want to terminate using the ps or
pgrep command.
ps aux | grep apache2
OR
pgrep apache2
Once you have the PIDs, use the kill command to terminate them.
kill -9 PID1 PID2 PID3
HOW TO KILL A PROCESS IN LINUX USING PROCESS NAME
To terminate a process using the process name, we will use the pkill command,
which is a version of the kill command that allows you to mention the process
name or a pattern to locate a process.
You must be aware of the process name, before killing, and entering a wrong
process name may screw you.
pkill mysqld
What if a process has too many instances and several child processes, we have a
command ‘killall‘ that takes the process name as an argument in place of the
process number.
HOW TO KILL A PROCESS IN LINUX USING THE KILLALL COMMAND
The main distinction between killall and kill is that killall can end a process
by its name, whereas the kill command relies on the process ID (pid).
To kill all mysql instances along with child processes, use the command as
follows.
killall mysqld
OR
pkill mysqld
You can always verify the status of the process if it is running or not, using
any of the below commands.
systemctl status mysql
pgrep mysql
ps -aux | grep mysql
Linux graphical systems monitor tools like htop or gnome-system-monitor provide
a user-friendly interface to find and kill processes.
CONCLUSION
That’s it for now from me. I’ll be back soon with another interesting and
informative topic. Until then, stay tuned and connected to Tecmint, and take
care of your health. Don’t forget to share your valuable feedback in the
comments section.
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Ravi Saive
I am an experienced GNU/Linux expert and a full-stack software developer with
over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies
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40 COMMENTS
Leave a Reply
1. James
August 25, 2021 at 3:35 pm
How do I kill a process that freezes everything so I can’t open a terminal?
Reply
2. as
May 2, 2019 at 11:03 am
Kill isn’t for kill processes. Kill is for send signals to other processes.
And no, there is no relationship between uptime and the kill/pkill/etc
commands. Most software has a standard start/stop procedure, some of them
use kill, but others not.
Reply
3. Gordon
June 27, 2018 at 11:01 am
Thanks. It was a helpful information.
Reply
4. Dave
April 19, 2018 at 1:27 am
Hey @oke deh, the output of your ‘ps‘ command is showing the ‘grep‘
command, not a process called ‘vnc‘.
By the time you run the kill command, the grep has completed and so the
process id no longer exists, so you can’t kill it.
Everything you have shown above is working exactly as it is supposed to
work, assuming there is no process running on the machine called ‘vnc*‘.
You should try with just ‘vnc‘, as your grep command is the thing wrong
here, not the kill command…
Reply
5. oke deh
January 1, 2018 at 12:12 am
Hello tecmint,
I try to kill this process but its not working…
"[root@rms ~]# ps -afe|grep vnc*
root 19784 19688 0 00:02 pts/0 00:00:00 grep vnc*"
I tried following command..
# kill -9 19784
return this output
"-bash: kill: (19784) - No such process"
what is the correct command?
Reply
* raghu
March 14, 2019 at 6:35 am
just use kill 19784
Reply
* Ismael
April 30, 2019 at 1:34 am
The kill PID you are using is for the grep issued, just do this to get
the PID.
# ps -afe|grep vn[c]
That will return only PID for VNC and the just issue the kill PID
Reply
* Paruchuri Ravi Teja
October 27, 2022 at 10:15 am
I think it has a master and working process. Without killing the master
you can’t kill the process. The same problem happens with nginx.
Reply
6. Artur
September 30, 2017 at 11:59 pm
In order to `kill skypeforlinux` I have used `killall skypeforlinux` two
times (because of a wingpanel I believe), but now actually I use this pidof
skypeforlinux | xargs kill -9 and it kills my skypeforlinux in one go :) .
A good article.
Reply
7. vivek
April 11, 2017 at 10:29 am
I am using kill -9 $pid command to kill my server. However, sometimes if I
restart the server, I get an exception as an address already in use that is
the port is still in use (port number 6001) even after stopping the server
using the above mentioned command.
Is there any other safe command to use to kill my server so that the port
is also freed along with killing of the process
Reply
* Vladimir
May 25, 2017 at 8:11 pm
You can find PID-s of all processes on a port with command *lsof -i
:6001*, where 6001 is a number of your port. Then you can kill all
processes on that port with *kill* command.
Reply
8. Carsten
January 30, 2017 at 1:13 pm
Thank u for this article :)
Reply
9. Afsar
January 16, 2017 at 11:15 pm
Very good article, I can learn now easily..
Reply
10. Mehmet Yesilçay
December 9, 2016 at 5:46 pm
thanks for sharing
Reply
11. ymkim
December 3, 2015 at 8:53 am
Thank you very much.
I was able to solve my problem, thanks to you.
“KamSaHamNiDa!!!”
Reply
12. Martial
October 11, 2015 at 5:25 am
Just to say thank you very much Avishek however I would like to know how
the root can kill a specific process for an user, please can you give me
with a scenario. Thanks again.
Reply
* Ravi Saive
October 12, 2015 at 11:36 am
@Martial,
First find the all the processes and Process IDs of particular users by
running following command.
# ps -aux | grep {user}
And then kill the specific process by their process ID’s
Reply
13. Stig
September 1, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Thanks a lot! Great guide!
Reply
14. Vijay
March 20, 2015 at 8:59 am
Very nice
Reply
15. Don Porter
February 23, 2015 at 9:53 pm
Something is messed up. I’ve installed Varnish 3.0 via apt-get install
running Raspbian on my Pi 2. For some reason, my “service” commands don’t
work. ” sudo service varnish start” yields “varnish: unrecognized service”.
Please advise how I can straighten this out. Thanks very much.
Reply
16. rajas
February 11, 2015 at 11:32 pm
how to avoid to kill any process. I mean suppose I do not want anybody to
kill mysql service using kill command so how can I do this?
Awaiting your reply,
Rjas
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
February 12, 2015 at 3:40 pm
@rajas,
if the process was started with root privileged, it can not be killed by
any user unless the user is sudoers.
Reply
17. Cesar
December 1, 2014 at 10:49 pm
I have problems with chrome slowing down my system, so I’m used to kill all
stances of chrome with this command:
$ while [pidof chrome]; do killall chrome; done
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:55 pm
Dear Cesar,
Thanks for the above quick tip.
:) Keep connected!
Reply
18. Sriram
October 1, 2014 at 4:28 pm
Hi,
Can you please tell how to kill all the process running when i close the
terminal/screen. Thanks.
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
October 2, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Dear sriram,
i Didn’t get you question.
When you close a terminal. All the running processes gets killed except
those running in background and you can kill those by finding their pid.
Reply
19. tamal2015
August 2, 2014 at 9:42 am
hi…can u tell me the procedure to replace graphic card in red hat linux
enterprise 6.0?…my pc was shipped with nvidia 610GT(zotac made GT610) but i
need to replace it with nvidia 210GT(asus made En210). the second card is
downgraded than the first one.Also can u inform me whether I need to do
free OS install or not for this? ur kindness is appreciated on this!!!
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:56 pm
I fear it would be built on the board and perhaps u cant swap it. Ask
your Vendor for such detailed hardware information.
Reply
20. linux fresher
September 27, 2013 at 8:59 am
may god bless this website to me more powerful than RHKB. Please list out
INterview section for new admins.
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
January 2, 2014 at 2:52 pm
@ Linux Fresher, I didn’t get you properly, although as far as i could
understand, you said words for Appraisals for us. Thanks
Reply
21. Sangeet Khatri
September 20, 2013 at 8:45 pm
Also xkill is the easiest way to kill a process using just your mouse.
Just type ‘xkill’ in the terminal and then it would change the cursor to a
cross, then just click on the process you want to kill and you are done. It
is as easy as that.
Please add this also. This is very useful in some really frustrating
situations like stuck in the middle of a game, then just do Alt+Ctrl+T to
bring up the terminal and kill the game using xkill.
It has helped me quite a lot of times, it might help you also.
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Dear Sangeet Khatri,
Thanks for the Quick tips.
Keep Connected!
Reply
22. ubungu
September 20, 2013 at 4:36 pm
Thank techmint for valuable posts :)
Thank again for good tip :)
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Welcome ubungu.
Keep connected!
Enjoy
Reply
23. akane
September 20, 2013 at 1:32 am
DO NOT use kill to stop services as a first resort. This will mess up your
system if you do it regularly. Use the init scripts already set up for that
purpose, or whichever program is provided for control of the service.
Normally, for example to stop rsyncd, you should use “/etc/init.d/rsync
stop”. You can use the same script to start, restart, or get status of the
service. Read the script to learn more about what it does.
If you have Upstart installed, then the “service” command works similarly
(but arguably better). The syntax is “service rsync restart” to restart
rsyncd, for example. Currently Upstart does not support all services in
Debian-based distros, so you might need to use the previous method.
Many services come with their own maintenance programs separate from the
init.d scripts. For example, apache2 httpd comes with apachectl.
Finally, while the “kill” command is mostly used to stop processes, it can
send *any* signal. Check out the manpage for more information. kill is much
more useful than explained here- but also more dangerous.
Reply
* Pawel
September 20, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Killall on Solaris will kill all processes on the system making it
unusable.
so it’s not a good habit to use killall. So use it with extreme care
first check then use :-)
Reply
24. siddiqullah
September 19, 2013 at 11:27 pm
i usually see interesting topics of linux in this site.i realy like this
site ,because it gets me femiliar with linux and i have leant alot upto
know.
thanks
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:58 pm
Dear Siddiqullah,
Thanks for your good words.
Keep Connected. Enjoy!
Reply
25. Suvarna
September 19, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Really very helpful information. I will try to use this to decrease server
load. Thank You Tecmint for sharing all valuable posts.
Reply
* Avishek Kumar
December 5, 2014 at 2:57 pm
Welcome Suvarna,
Keep Connected, Enjoy!
Reply
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