PKILL(1)

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
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).

-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 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>