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DESCRIPTION

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 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.

-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 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. 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

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 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 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 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.