KILL(1) KILL(1) NAME kill - terminate a process with extreme prejudice SYNOPSIS kill [ -signo ] processid ... DESCRIPTION Kill sends signal 15 (terminate) to the specified processes. If a signal number preceded by `-' is given as first argu- ment, that signal is sent instead of terminate (see signal(2)). This will kill processes that do not catch the signal; in particular `kill -9 ...' is a sure kill. By convention, if process number 0 is specified, all members in the process group (i.e. processes resulting from the current login) are signaled. The killed processes must belong to the current user unless he is the super-user. To shut the system down and bring it up single user the super-user may use `kill -1 1'; see init(8). The process number of an asynchronous process started with `&' is reported by the shell. Process numbers can also be found by using ps(1). SEE ALSO ps(1), kill(2), signal(2)