KILLALL(1)              System General Commands Manual              KILLALL(1)

NAME
     killall - kill processes by name

SYNOPSIS
     killall [-d | -v] [-h | -?] [-help] [-l] [-m] [-s] [-u user] [-t tty]
             [-c procname] [-SIGNAL] [procname ...]

DESCRIPTION
     Killall kills processes selected by name, as opposed to the selection by
     pid as done by kill(1).  By default, it will send a TERM signal to all
     processes with a real UID identical to the caller of killall that match
     the name procname.  The super-user is allowed to kill any process.

     The options are as follows:

           -d | -v     Be more verbose about what will be done.  For a single
                       -d option, a list of the processes that will be sent
                       the signal will be printed, or a message indicating
                       that no matching processes have been found.

           -h | -?

           -help       Give a help on the command usage and exit.

           -l          List the names of the available signals and exit, like
                       in kill(1).

           -m          Match the argument procname as a (case insensitive)
                       regular expression against the names of processes
                       found.  CAUTION!  This is dangerous, a single dot will
                       match any process running under the real UID of the
                       caller.

           -s          Show only what would be done, but do not send any sig-
                       nal.

           -SIGNAL     Send a different signal instead of the default TERM.
                       The signal may be specified either as a name (with or
                       without a leading SIG), or numerically.

           -u user     Limit potentially matching processes to those belonging
                       to the specified user.

           -t tty      Limit potentially matching processes to those running
                       on the specified tty.

           -c procname
                       When used with the -u or -t flags, limit potentially
                       matching processes to those matching the specified
                       progname.

ALL PROCESSES
     Sending a signal to all processes with uid XYZ is already supported by
     kill(1).  So use kill(1) for this job (e.g. $ kill -TERM -1 or as root $
     echo kill -TERM -1 | su -m <user>)

DIAGNOSTICS
     The killall command will respond with a short usage message and exit with
     a status of 2 in case of a command error.  A status of 1 will be returned
     if either no matching process has been found or not all processes have
     been signalled successfully.  Otherwise, a status of 0 will be returned.

     Diagnostic messages will only be printed if requested by -d options.

SEE ALSO
     kill(1), sysctl(3)

HISTORY
     The killall command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.  It has been modeled after
     the killall command as available on other platforms.

AUTHORS
     The killall program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
     Wolfram Schneider, this manual page has been written by J"org Wunsch.  The
     current version of killall was rewritten in C by Peter Wemm using
     sysctl(3).

BSD                              June 25, 1995                             BSD