| Linux / Unix Command: kill |
NAME
kill - send signal to a processSYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <signal.h> int kill(pid_t pid, int sig);
DESCRIPTION
The kill system call can be used to send any signal to any process group or process.If pid is positive, then signal sig is sent to pid.
If pid equals 0, then sig is sent to every process in the process group of the current process.
If pid equals -1, then sig is sent to every process except for process 1 (init), but see below.
If pid is less than -1, then sig is sent to every process in the process group -pid.
If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is still performed.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.ERRORS
- EINVAL
- An invalid signal was specified.
- ESRCH
- The pid or process group does not exist. Note that an existing process might be a zombie, a process which already committed termination, but has not yet been wait()ed for.
- EPERM
- The process does not have permission to send the signal to any of the receiving processes. For a process to have permission to send a signal to process pid it must either have root privileges, or the real or effective user ID of the sending process must equal the real or saved set-user-ID of the receiving process. In the case of SIGCONT it suffices when the sending and receiving processes belong to the same session.
SEE ALSO
_exit(2), exit(3), signal(2), signal(7)
Important: Use the man command (% man) to see how a command is used on your particular computer.
