DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
PKILL(1) DragonFly General Commands Manual PKILL(1)
NAME
pgrep, pkill - find or signal processes by name
SYNOPSIS
pgrep [-LSTafilnoqvx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-M core] [-N system]
[-P ppid] [-U uid] [-c class] [-d delim] [-g pgrp] [-j jid]
[-s sid] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...
pkill [-signal] [-ILTafilnovx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-M core]
[-N system] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-c class] [-g pgrp] [-j jid]
[-s sid] [-t tty] [-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:
-F pidfile Restrict matches to a process whose PID is stored in
the pidfile file.
-G gid Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in
the comma-separated list gid.
-I Request confirmation before attempting to signal each
process.
-L The pidfile file given for the -F option must be locked
with the flock(2) syscall or created with pidfile(3).
-M core Extract values associated with the name list from the
specified core instead of the currently running system.
-N system Extract the name list from the specified system instead
of the default, which is the kernel image the system
has booted from.
-P ppid Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID
in the comma-separated list ppid.
-S Search also in system processes (kernel threads).
-T Restrict matches to processes associated with the
current terminal.
-U uid Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in
the comma-separated list uid.
-a Include process ancestors in the match list. By
default, the current pgrep or pkill process and all of
its ancestors are excluded (unless -v is used).
-c class Restrict matches to processes running with specified
login class class.
-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 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.
-i Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and
the supplied pattern.
-j jid Restrict matches to processes inside jails with a jail
ID in the comma-separated list jid. The value "any"
matches processes in any jail. The value "none"
matches processes not in jail.
-l Long output. For pgrep, 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.
For pkill, display the kill command used for each
process killed.
-n Select only the newest (most recently started) of the
matching processes.
-o Select only the oldest (least recently started) of the
matching processes.
-q Do not write anything to standard output.
-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, the full path form
/dev/ttyxx, or the shortened form xx. For pseudo
terminals, use pts/xx, /dev/pts/xx, or xx as the name.
A single dash (`-') matches processes not associated
with a terminal.
-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 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 full argument list of each
process. If the -f option is not specified, then the pattern will
attempt to match the command name. However, presently FreeBSD will only
keep track of the first 19 characters of the command name for each
process. Attempts to match any characters after the first 19 of a
command name will quietly fail.
Note that a running pgrep or pkill process will never consider itself nor
system processes (kernel threads) as a potential match.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The Sun Solaris implementation utilised procfs to obtain process
information. This implementation utilises kvm(3) instead. On a live
system, kvm(3) uses the kern.proc MIB to obtain the list of processes.
Kernel memory through /dev/kmem is not accessed.
EXIT STATUS
The pgrep and pkill utilities return one of the following values upon
exit:
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.
COMPATIBILITY
Historically the option "-j 0" means any jail, although in other
utilities such as ps(1) jail ID 0 has the opposite meaning, not in jail.
Therefore "-j 0" is deprecated, and its use is discouraged in favor of
"-j any".
SEE ALSO
kill(1), killall(1), ps(1), flock(2), kill(2), sigaction(2), pidfile(3),
signal(3), re_format(7)
HISTORY
The pkill and pgrep utilities originated in NetBSD 1.6. They are
modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7.
They first appeared in DragonFly 1.1.
AUTHORS
Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>
DragonFly 6.3-DEVELOPMENT January 7, 2023 DragonFly 6.3-DEVELOPMENT