Linux Command - kill

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kill - terminate a process by sending a signal.

The command kill sends the specified signal to the specified process or process group. If no signal is specified, the TERM(15) signal is sent.

kill command kills a process by its PID. To kill a process by name, use killall command.

Syntax

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kill [-s signal] pid...
kill -signalnumber pid...
kill -l

Options

Option Description
-s signal specify the signal to send, default is TERM
-p pid… list of processes kill should signal
-l to list signal names

pkill command

If you know the name of the process, you can use pkill [OPTIONS] <PATTERN> to kill all running programs that match with the given name. To kill all python3 process: 

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pkill node # kill all node applications

Example

kill a process

kill without option will send SIGTERM signal. Use ps aux | grep <search keywork> to get the process id. Then use kill command to kill the process.

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kill 16575

Send KILL signal to a process

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kill -9 16575

or

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kill -s KILL 16575

List signal names

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kill -l

To kill a process by pid

use ps aux or pgreg command to get the process’s PID.

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ps aux | grep node

In MacOS, if you only know the port number used by the application, you can get the PID and command using the following command

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sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P

With the process id, You can use kill <pid> to terminate the program. The default sends SIGTERM signal. You can use kill -9 <pid> command to send SIGKILL to terminate immediately. SIGKILL is hard kill.

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kill -9 9058

Reference