NAME
pgrep
, pkill
— find or signal processes by
name
SYNOPSIS
pgrep |
[-LSafilnoqvx ] [-F
pidfile] [-G
gid] [-M
core] [-N
system] [-P
ppid] [-U
uid] [-c
class] [-d
delim] [-g
pgrp] [-j
jail] [-s
sid] [-t
tty] [-u
euid] pattern ... |
pkill |
[- signal]
[-ILafilnovx ] [-F
pidfile] [-G
gid] [-M
core] [-N
system] [-P
ppid] [-U
uid] [-c
class] [-g
pgrp] [-j
jail] [-s
sid] [-t
tty] [-u
euid] pattern ... |
DESCRIPTION
Thepgrep
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).
-U
uid- Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-separated list uid.
-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. -a
- Include process ancestors in the match list. By default, the current
pgrep
orpkill
process and all of its ancestors are excluded (unless-v
is used). -c
class- Restrict matches to processes running with specified login class class.
-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
orpkill
command. -i
- Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and the supplied pattern.
-j
jail- Restrict matches to processes inside the specified jails. The argument
jail may be
“
any
” to match processes in any jail, “none
” to match processes not in jail, or a comma-separated list of jail IDs or names. -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. Forpkill
, 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
- For
pgrep
, 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
orpkill
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 or the
shortened form xx. 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 topkill
.
If any pattern operands are specified, they
are used as extended 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 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.
EXAMPLES
Show the pid of the process holding the /tmp/.X0-lock pid file:
$ pgrep -F /tmp/.X0-lock 1211
Show the pid and the name of the process including kernel threads in the search:
$ pgrep -lS vnlru 37 vnlru
Search for processes including kernel threads that match the extended regular expression pattern:
$ pgrep -S 'crypto.*[2-3]' 20 19 6 5
Show long output for firefox processes:
$ pgrep -l firefox 1312 firefox 1309 firefox 1288 firefox 1280 firefox 1279 firefox 1278 firefox 1277 firefox 1264 firefox
Same as above but just showing the pid of the most recent process:
$ pgrep -n firefox 1312
Look for vim processes. Match against the full argument list:
$ pgrep -f vim 44968 30790
Same as above but matching against the
‘list
’ word and showing the full
argument list:
$ pgrep -f -l list 30790 vim list.txt
Send SIGSTOP signal to processes that are an exact match:
$ pkill -SIGSTOP -f -x "vim list.txt"
Without -f
names over 19 characters will
silently fail:
$ vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name & [1] 36689 $ [1]+ Stopped vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name $ pgrep "vim this" $
Same as above using the -f
flag:
$ pgrep -f "vim this" 36689
Find the top(1) command running in any jail:
$ pgrep -j any top 34498
Show all processes running in jail ID 58:
$ pgrep -l -j58 '.*' 28397 pkg-static 28396 pkg-static 28255 sh 28254 make
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), kvm(3), pidfile(3), re_format(7)
HISTORY
The pkill
and
pgrep
utilities first appeared in
NetBSD 1.6. They are modelled after utilities of the
same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7. They made their first appearance
in FreeBSD 5.3.
AUTHORS
Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>