KILL(1)

📦
version 0.12.0 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 kill(1) — ur lil signal-sender, bestie edition ✨

okay so. welcome to KILL(1), straight out of the General Commands Manual 🎀. yes it's called kill and yes it sounds dramatic but bestie it's literally just how you send signals to processes, or peek at the signal lore. group-chat energy, but make it syscalls 💖

✨ NAME ✨

kill — send signal to processes or list information about signals.

like. that's the whole gig. sending vibes (signals) to a process, or listing info about signals. iconic behavior honestly 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

kill [OPTIONS]... PID...

read it. live it. love it. you give it options, you give it PIDs, it does the thing 👑

🧚 DESCRIPTION 🧚

Send signal to processes or list information about signals.

that's the description. it's short. it's sweet. it's giving minimalism ✨ literally the entire personality of this tool in one sentence.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -l, --list — Lists signals 📋
  • -t, --table — Lists table of signals 🗂️
  • -s, --signal <signal> — Sends given signal instead of SIGTERM 💌 (so if you don't say which signal, it's SIGTERM by default, no cap)
  • -h, --help — Print help 🆘
  • -V, --version — Print version 🏷️

💜 VERSION 💜

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

okay bestie this is the good part. here's how you actually use it 💖

Terminate a program using the default SIGTERM (terminate) signal:

kill process_id

List available signal names (to be used without the SIG prefix):

kill -l

Terminate a program using the SIGHUP (hang up) signal. Many daemons will reload instead of terminating:

kill [-1|-HUP] process_id

Terminate a program using the SIGINT (interrupt) signal. This is typically initiated by the user pressing <Ctrl c>:

kill [-2|-INT] process_id

Signal the operating system to immediately terminate a program (which gets no chance to capture the signal):

kill [-9|-KILL] process_id
⚠️ okay real talk, -9 / KILL is the "no takebacks" option. the program gets no chance to capture the signal. it cannot save its work, it cannot clean up, it cannot say goodbye. save that one for when you truly mean it 💀

Signal the operating system to pause a program until a SIGCONT ("continue") signal is received:

kill [-19|-STOP] process_id

Send a SIGUSR1 signal to all processes with the given GID (group id):

kill -SIGUSR1 -group_id

🌈 A LIL CREDIT + DISCLAIMER 🌈

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.

🙈 fr fr, uutils is a work in progress, so if an example ghosts you and doesn't work, that's literally a known thing. not you. it's not you bestie 🫶

that's the whole page 💜 this was kill(1) from the General Commands Manual, page dated 2026-09-25, shipping with v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0 — go signal something responsibly, mwah 🌸✨

📦 where this page comes from