I have an aribtrary bash command being run that I want to attach some identifying comment to so that I may pkill it if necessary.
For example:
sleep 1000 #uniqueHash93581
pkill -f '#uniqueHash93581'
... but the #uniqueHash93581 does not get interpreted, so pkill won't find the process.
Any way to pass this unique hash so that I may pkill the process?
Bash removes comments before running commands.
A workaround with Linux and GNU grep:
Prefix your command with a variable with a unique value
ID=uniqueHash93581 sleep 1000
Later search this variable to get the PID and kill the process
grep -sa ID=uniqueHash93581 /proc/*/environ | cut -d '/' -f 3 | xargs kill
exec the command in a subshell, and use the -a option to give it a recognizable name. For example:
$ (exec -a foobar sleep 1000) &
$ ps | grep foobar
893 ttys000 0:00.00 foobar 10
Or, just run the job in the background and save its PID.
$ sleep 1000 & pid=$!
$ kill "$pid"
I start the following script which I run in a bash shell(let's say shell1) in foreground and from another shell(shell2) I send the kill -SIGUSR1 pidof(scriptA). Nothing happens. What am I doing wrong ? I tried other signals(SIGQUIT etc) but the result is same.
test_trap.sh
function iAmDone { echo "Trapped Signal"; exit 0 }
trap iAmDone SIGUSR1
echo "Running... "
tail -f /dev/null # Do nothing
In shell1
./test_trap.sh
In shell2
kill -SIGUSR1 ps aux | grep [t]est_trap | awk '{print $2}'
The trap is not executed until tail finishes. But tail never finishes. Try:
tail -f /dev/null &
wait
The trap will execute without waiting for tail to complete, but if you exit the tail will be left running. So you'll probably want a kill $! in the trap.
I have a script that has to kill a certain number of times a resource managed by a high avialability middelware. It basically checks whether the resource is running and kills it afterwards, i need the timestamp of when the proc is really killed. So i have done this code:
#!/bin/bash
echo "$(date +"%T,%N") :New measures Run" > /home/hassan/logs/measures.log
for i in {1..50}
do
echo "Iteration: $i"
PID=`ps -ef | grep "/home/hassan/Desktop/pcmAppBin pacemaker_app/MainController"|grep -v "grep" | awk {'print$2'}`
if [ -n "$PID" ]; then
echo "$(date +"%T,%N") :Killing $PID" >> /home/hassan/logs/measures.log
ps -ef | grep "/home/hassan/Desktop/pcmAppBin pacemaker_app/MainController"|grep -v "grep" | awk {'print "kill -9 " $2'} | sh
wait $PID
else
PID=`ps -ef | grep "/home/hassan/Desktop/pcmAppBin pacemaker_app/MainController"|grep -v "grep" | awk {'print$2'}`
until [ -n "$PID" ]; do
sleep 2
PID=`ps -ef | grep "/home/hassan/Desktop/pcmAppBin pacemaker_app/MainController"|grep -v "grep" | awk {'print$2'}`
done
fi
done
But with my wait command i get the following error message: wait: pid xxxx is not a child of this shell
I assume that You started the child processes from bash and then start this script to wait for. The problem is that the child processes are not the children of the bash running the script, but the children of its parent!
If You want to launch a script inside the the current bash You should start with ..
An example. You start a vim and then You make is stop pressing ^Z (later you can use fg to get back to vim). Then You can get the list of jobs by using the˙jobs command.
$ jobs
[1]+ Stopped vim myfile
Then You can create a script called test.sh containing just one command, called jobs. Add execute right (e.g. chmod 700 test.sh), then start it:
$ cat test.sh
jobs
~/dev/fi [3:1]$ ./test.sh
~/dev/fi [3:1]$ . ./test.sh
[1]+ Stopped vim myfile
As the first version creates a new bash session no jobs are listed. But using . the script runs in the present bash script having exactly one chold process (namely vim). So launch the script above using the . so no child bash will be created.
Be aware that defining any variables or changing directory (and a lot more) will affect to your environment! E.g. PID will be visible by the calling bash!
Comments:
Do not use ...|grep ...|grep -v ... |awk --- pipe snakes! Use ...|awk... instead!
In most Linux-es you can use something like this ps -o pid= -C pcmAppBin to get just the pid, so the complete pipe can be avoided.
To call an external program from awk you could try system("mycmd"); built-in
I hope this helps a bit!
Let's suppose I have a bash script (foo.sh) that in a very simplified form, looks like the following:
echo "hello"
sleep 100 &
ps ax | grep sleep | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 } ' | xargs kill -9
echo "bye"
The third line imitates pkill, which I don't have by default on Mac OS X, but you can think of it as the same as pkill. However, when I run this script, I get the following output:
hello
foo: line 4: 54851 Killed sleep 100
bye
How do I suppress the line in the middle so that all I see is hello and bye?
While disown may have the side effect of silencing the message; this is how you start the process in a way that the message is truly silenced without having to give up job control of the process.
{ command & } 2>/dev/null
If you still want the command's own stderr (just silencing the shell's message on stderr) you'll need to send the process' stderr to the real stderr:
{ command 2>&3 & } 3>&2 2>/dev/null
To learn about how redirection works:
From the BashGuide: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide/TheBasics/InputAndOutput#Redirection
An illustrated tutorial: http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php/howto/redirection_tutorial
And some more info: http://bash-hackers.org/wiki/doku.php/syntax/redirection
And by the way; don't use kill -9.
I also feel obligated to comment on your:
ps ax | grep sleep | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 } ' | xargs kill -9
This will scortch the eyes of any UNIX/Linux user with a clue. Moreover, every time you parse ps, a fairy dies. Do this:
kill $!
Even tools such as pgrep are essentially broken by design. While they do a better job of matching processes, the fundamental flaws are still there:
Race: By the time you get a PID output and parse it back in and use it for something else, the PID might already have disappeared or even replaced by a completely unrelated process.
Responsibility: In the UNIX process model, it is the responsibility of a parent to manage its child, nobody else should. A parent should keep its child's PID if it wants to be able to signal it and only the parent can reliably do so. UNIX kernels have been designed with the assumption that user programs will adhere to this pattern, not violate it.
How about disown? This mostly works for me on Bash on Linux.
echo "hello"
sleep 100 &
disown
ps ax | grep sleep | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 } ' | xargs kill -9
echo "bye"
Edit: Matched the poster's code better.
The message is real. The code killed the grep process as well.
Run ps ax | grep sleep and you should see your grep process on the list.
What I usually do in this case is ps ax | grep sleep | grep -v grep
EDIT: This is an answer to older form of question where author omitted the exclusion of grep for the kill sequence. I hope I still get some rep for answering the first half.
Yet another way to disable job termination messages is to put your command to be backgrounded in a sh -c 'cmd &' construct.
And as already pointed out, there is no need to imitate pkill; you may store the value of $! in another variable instead.
echo "hello"
sleep_pid=`sh -c 'sleep 30 & echo ${!}' | head -1`
#sleep_pid=`sh -c '(exec 1>&-; exec sleep 30) & echo ${!}'`
echo kill $sleep_pid
kill $sleep_pid
echo "bye"
Have you tried to deactivate job control? It's a non-interactive shell, so I would guess it's off by default, but it does not hurt to try... It's regulated by the -m (monitor) shell variable.
This question already has answers here:
Find and kill a process in one line using bash and regex
(30 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
Sometimes when I try to start Firefox it says "a Firefox process is already running". So I have to do this:
jeremy#jeremy-desktop:~$ ps aux | grep firefox
jeremy 7451 25.0 27.4 170536 65680 ? Sl 22:39 1:18 /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.1/firefox
jeremy 7578 0.0 0.3 3004 768 pts/0 S+ 22:44 0:00 grep firefox
jeremy#jeremy-desktop:~$ kill 7451
What I'd like is a command that would do all that for me. It would take an input string and grep for it (or whatever) in the list of processes, and would kill all the processes in the output:
jeremy#jeremy-desktop:~$ killbyname firefox
I tried doing it in PHP but exec('ps aux') seems to only show processes that have been executed with exec() in the PHP script itself (so the only process it shows is itself.)
pkill firefox
More information: http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_pkill.htm
Also possible to use:
pkill -f "Process name"
For me, it worked up perfectly. It was what I have been looking for.
pkill doesn't work with name without the flag.
When -f is set, the full command line is used for pattern matching.
You can kill processes by name with killall <name>
killall sends a signal to all
processes running any of the specified
commands. If no signal name is
specified, SIGTERM is sent.
Signals can be specified either by
name (e.g. -HUP or -SIGHUP ) or by number (e.g.
-1) or by option -s.
If the command name is not regular
expression (option -r) and contains a
slash (/), processes executing that
particular file will be selected for
killing, independent of their name.
But if you don't see the process with ps aux, you probably won't have the right to kill it ...
A bit longer alternative:
kill `pidof firefox`
The easiest way to do is first check you are getting right process IDs with:
pgrep -f [part_of_a_command]
If the result is as expected. Go with:
pkill -f [part_of_a_command]
If processes get stuck and are unable to accomplish the request you can use kill.
kill -9 $(pgrep -f [part_of_a_command])
If you want to be on the safe side and only terminate processes that you initially started add -u along with your username
pkill -f [part_of_a_command] -u [username]
Kill all processes having snippet in startup path. You can kill all apps started from some directory by for putting /directory/ as a snippet. This is quite usefull when you start several components for the same application from the same app directory.
ps ax | grep <snippet> | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill
* I would prefer pgrep if available
Strange, but I haven't seen the solution like this:
kill -9 `pidof firefox`
it can also kill multiple processes (multiple pids) like:
kill -9 `pgrep firefox`
I prefer pidof since it has single line output:
> pgrep firefox
6316
6565
> pidof firefox
6565 6316
Using killall command:
killall processname
Use -9 or -KILL to forcefully kill the program (the options are similar to the kill command).
On Mac I could not find the pgrep and pkill neither was killall working so wrote a simple one liner script:-
export pid=`ps | grep process_name | awk 'NR==1{print $1}' | cut -d' ' -f1`;kill $pid
If there's an easier way of doing this then please share.
To kill with grep:
kill -9 `pgrep myprocess`
more correct would be:
export pid=`ps aux | grep process_name | awk 'NR==1{print $2}' | cut -d' ' -f1`;kill -9 $pid
I normally use the killall command.
Check this link for details of this command.
I was asking myself the same question but the problem with the current answers is that they don't safe check the processes to be killed so... it could lead to terrible mistakes :)... especially if several processes matches the pattern.
As a disclaimer, I'm not a sh pro and there is certainly room for improvement.
So I wrote a little sh script :
#!/bin/sh
killables=$(ps aux | grep $1 | grep -v mykill | grep -v grep)
if [ ! "${killables}" = "" ]
then
echo "You are going to kill some process:"
echo "${killables}"
else
echo "No process with the pattern $1 found."
return
fi
echo -n "Is it ok?(Y/N)"
read input
if [ "$input" = "Y" ]
then
for pid in $(echo "${killables}" | awk '{print $2}')
do
echo killing $pid "..."
kill $pid
echo $pid killed
done
fi
kill -9 $(ps aux | grep -e myprocessname| awk '{ print $2 }')
If you run GNOME, you can use the system monitor (System->Administration->System Monitor) to kill processes as you would under Windows. KDE will have something similar.
The default kill command accepts command names as an alternative to PID. See kill (1). An often occurring trouble is that bash provides its own kill which accepts job numbers, like kill %1, but not command names. This hinders the default command. If the former functionality is more useful to you than the latter, you can disable the bash version by calling
enable -n kill
For more info see kill and enable entries in bash (1).
ps aux | grep processname | cut -d' ' -f7 | xargs kill -9 $
awk oneliner, which parses the header of ps output, so you don't need to care about column numbers (but column names). Support regex. For example, to kill all processes, which executable name (without path) contains word "firefox" try
ps -fe | awk 'NR==1{for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {if ($i=="COMMAND") Ncmd=i; else if ($i=="PID") Npid=i} if (!Ncmd || !Npid) {print "wrong or no header" > "/dev/stderr"; exit} }$Ncmd~"/"name"$"{print "killing "$Ncmd" with PID " $Npid; system("kill "$Npid)}' name=.*firefox.*