Score:0

Ubuntu

How to kill 3 processes with totally different names?

dawnslayer

12/14/22, 6:22 AM

I want to kill 3 processes with all different names, nothing in common at all. How do I do this? grep cant capture them all because there is nothing in common, or is there a way to make it grab all them?

925

4 + 3

kill

Nmath

12/14/22, 6:33 AM

It's hard to answer a question without any details. For starters you can tell us the processes and why you can't just run three commands.

guiverc

12/14/22, 6:36 AM

Kill allows you to specify multiple PIDs; see `man kill` for the reference manual page.

Quasímodo

12/14/22, 5:45 PM

-1 I really don't get this. Even if every command that can kill could only kill a single process, all you would have to do is to issue the command three times, right?

Score:8

Ubuntu

LiveWireBT

12/14/22, 9:25 AM

An example for killing gnome-disks and gnome-system-monitor.

kill $(pidof gnome-disks gnome-system-monitor)

I'm sure we have this around here already in some form, because someone here must have told me something like this years ago.

You could make it prettier, but more complicated like this:

# Provide a white space separated list of program names to be killed
programs_to_kill="gnome-disks gnome-system-monitor"
kill $(pidof $programs_to_kill)

0 + 1

melvio

12/15/22, 11:39 AM

Upvoted. @dawnslayer I propose that you mark this as the accepted answer. This solution will be the best approach for most people.

Score:4

Ubuntu

melvio

12/14/22, 9:57 AM

If you really want to use grepping, you can use pkill to get the process-ids (pids). pkill greps for some pattern in the process names and kills the found processes.

The syntax you can use is:

pkill 'process_name1|other_process|something_else'

You can use pgrep (process grep) to check what you are about to kill with pkill.
The syntax is very similar:

pgrep -l 'proces_name1|other_process|something_else'

For example, if I run the following command on my machine, I get a listing of matches with their pids:

$ pgrep -l 'clamd|dockerd|snapd'
1952 snapd
1989 clamd
2085 dockerd
2813 dockerd

Warning: If you actually know the full process names, please use LiveWireBT's answer of:

kill $(pidof process_name1 other_proces)

That way, ssh-agent and sshd won't be the victim when you run pkill ssh and didn't pay attention to what pgrep -l ssh said.

0 + 5

melvio

12/14/22, 10:06 AM

Note that I personally would use @LiveWireBT answer. Grepping can be tricky and you might end up killing too few processes, or even worse, too many. However, since you mentioned grep, I added this answer to provide you with the functionality.

Peter Cordes

12/15/22, 10:40 AM

Can you anchor the patterns with `^foo$|^bar$` or something to force them to match the full process name, instead of just substrings which could easily match too much? Or pkill/pgrep option to require full-string matches like `grep -x`?

melvio

12/15/22, 11:02 AM

@PeterCordes comment shows precisely the issue with grep; it's riskier than needed if you already know the full names. If you know the full names of the process to kill, I wouldn't even bother with `-x` or `^process-name$`. I would use @LiveWireBT's solution instead. Only use this if you want to combine `grep`+`kill` functionality.

Peter Cordes

12/15/22, 11:18 AM

Right sure, but if you want to post about grep at all, you can be specific about what the risks are and what makes it less convenient to use safely.

melvio

12/15/22, 11:29 AM

I agree @PeterCordes. I have added a **warning** note. I'm also happy to accept additional edits that explain the tradeoffs/risks/caveats.

Score:2

Ubuntu

Ronny Forsberg

12/14/22, 8:46 AM

killall name1 && killall name2 && killall name3

0 + 3

LiveWireBT

12/14/22, 9:22 AM

Anecdote: In a job a few years ago we had to monitor java applications and restart them if necessary. So I used `killall` to kill the processes, which was fine. I restarted them as in the documentation we had. All fine. Until next day (or a few days more) when the second level support asked how I killed the processes, because the java application that is supposed to monitor the processes "died" and didn't come back. That application wasn't in our documentation however. The kind of dumb things people do. :-) (Poor understanding of the application platform, poor documentation.)

LiveWireBT

12/14/22, 9:34 AM

Hello new contributor. Please provide a complete answer. It may be of interest why you choose to abort if the first kill command is not successful, which is what chaining commands together with `&&` does in bash.

bac0n

12/14/22, 5:35 PM

`killall name1 name2 name3` will do.

Score:-1

Ubuntu

Venca B Spam

12/14/22, 7:38 AM

Assuming you can select the three processes by name, then my solution would be:

kill `ps awx| grep -E '((ProcessNameA)|(ProcessNameB)|(ProcessNameC))'  |grep -v grep| sed "s/ .*$//"`

0 + 2

LiveWireBT

12/14/22, 9:07 AM

A well known hack to avoid `grep 'pattern' | grep -v grep` is to use `grep '[p]attern'`. :-)

LiveWireBT

12/14/22, 9:44 AM

It probably gets the job done, but you should study more manpages of the tools available. I built similar things years ago which coworkers were afraid to touch. I know when I mangle too much through grep and sed, then I should take a look at awk or rethink the whole thing. shellcheck is a useful tool. Googles Shell Style Guide is also worth a read.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: How to kill 3 processes with totally different names?

TH: จะฆ่า 3 กระบวนการด้วยชื่อที่แตกต่างกันโดยสิ้นเชิงได้อย่างไร?

RO: Cum să omorâți 3 procese cu nume total diferite?

RU: Как убить 3 процесса с совершенно разными именами?

VI: Làm cách nào để tiêu diệt 3 quy trình có tên hoàn toàn khác nhau?

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