Last login: Thu 24 Sep 2026 on tty1
Archived edition.
$man 1 kill
Ten things the page says. Every one of them is on your machine right now — run the command above and check.
-
01
Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0.[man]
-
02
Alternate signals may be specified in three ways: -9, -SIGKILL or -KILL.[man]
-
03
Negative PID values may be used to choose whole process groups; see the PGID column in ps command output.[man]
-
04
A PID of -1 is special; it indicates all processes except the kill process itself and init.[man]
-
05
kill -l 11 Translate number 11 into a signal name.[man]
-
06
kill -L List the available signal choices in a nice table.[man]
-
07
kill 123 543 2341 3453 Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.[man]
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08
<pid> [...] Send signal to every <pid> listed.[man]
-
09
-<signal> -s <signal> --signal <signal> Specify the signal to be sent.[man]
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10
The signal can be specified by using name or number.[man]
$run --yourself
Signal a process you own
kill does not mean kill. It means send a signal, and TERM is a polite request the process may handle. That distinction is the whole page.
$ sleep 300 &
$ jobs
$ kill -l | head -3
$ kill -TERM %1
$ jobsWHAT YOU SHOULD SEEA background sleep appears as job [1]. kill -l lists signal names. After kill -TERM the job reports Terminated and disappears.
$quiz -n 5
Five questions, each one taking a term out of a line above. Ten points for each. Tap hear it to have a question read to you; answering plays the verdict.
QUESTION 1 OF 5
Which term completes this line from the page? “_____ useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0.”
From point 1 above.
QUESTION 2 OF 5
Which term completes this line from the page? “_____ PID values may be used to choose whole process groups; see the PGID column in ps command output.”
From point 3 above.
QUESTION 3 OF 5
Which term completes this line from the page? “kill -l 11 Translate _____ 11 into a signal name.”
From point 5 above.
QUESTION 4 OF 5
Which term completes this line from the page? “kill 123 543 2341 3453 Send the default signal, _____, to all those processes.”
From point 7 above.
QUESTION 5 OF 5
Which term completes this line from the page? “-<signal> -s <signal> --signal <signal> _____ the signal to be sent.”
From point 9 above.
Answer all five to bank your points.
$play --chapters 5
Five chapters, three voices. Tap one to jump — the player at the bottom of the screen follows.
$tee --everyone
Know someone with ten minutes and a terminal? Send them today's page. This is the card that appears when you post it:
$su - operator
The Operator has a dispatch on kill(1),
and he files them for subscribers only. It is free.
Join the club, or read about
the series.
MOTD is a weekday reading of one manual page already installed on your own
machine. Every statement is quoted from that page or from the GNU info
documentation beside it, and every edition names the command that shows you
the source.
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