The
pgrep
command searches the process table on the running system and prints the
process IDs of all processes that match the criteria given on the command
line.
The
pkill
command searches the process table on the running system and signals all
processes that match the criteria given on the command line.
The following options are available:
-F pidfile
Restrict matches to a process whose PID is stored in the
pidfile
file.
-G gid
Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in the comma-separated
list
gid
-I
Request confirmation before attempting to signal each process.
-L
The
pidfile
file given for the
-F
option must be locked with the
flock(2)
syscall or created with
pidfile(3).
-M core
Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core
instead of the currently running system.
-N system
Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default,
which is the kernel image the system has booted from.
-P ppid
Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID in the
comma-separated list
ppid
-S
Search also in system processes (kernel threads).
-U uid
Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-separated
list
uid
-d delim
Specify a delimiter to be printed between each process ID.
The default is a newline.
This option can only be used with the
pgrep
command.
-f
Match against full argument lists.
The default is to match against process names.
-g pgrp
Restrict matches to processes with a process group ID in the comma-separated
list
pgrp
The value zero is taken to mean the process group ID of the running
pgrep
or
pkill
command.
-i
Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and the supplied pattern.
-j jid
Restrict matches to processes inside jails with a jail ID in the comma-separated
list
jid
The value
``any
''
matches processes in any jail.
The value
``none
''
matches processes not in jail.
-l
Long output.
Print the process name in addition to the process ID for each matching
process.
If used in conjunction with
-f
print the process ID and the full argument list for each matching process.
This option can only be used with the
pgrep
command.
-n
Select only the newest (most recently started) of the matching processes.
-o
Select only the oldest (least recently started) of the matching processes.
-s sid
Restrict matches to processes with a session ID in the comma-separated
list
sid
The value zero is taken to mean the session ID of the running
pgrep
or
pkill
command.
-t tty
Restrict matches to processes associated with a terminal in the
comma-separated list
tty
Terminal names may be of the form
tty xx
or the shortened form
xx
A single dash
(`-'
)
matches processes not associated with a terminal.
-u euid
Restrict matches to processes with an effective user ID in the
comma-separated list
euid
-v
Reverse the sense of the matching; display processes that do not match the
given criteria.
-x
Require an exact match of the process name, or argument list if
-f
is given.
The default is to match any substring.
-signal
A non-negative decimal number or symbolic signal name specifying the signal
to be sent instead of the default
TERM
This option is valid only when given as the first argument to
pkill
If any
pattern
operands are specified, they are used as regular expressions to match
the command name or full argument list of each process.
If the
-f
option is not specified, then the
pattern
will attempt to match the command name.
However, presently
Fx will only keep track of the first 19 characters of the command
name for each process.
Attempts to match any characters after the first 19 of a command name
will quietly fail.
Note that a running
pgrep
or
pkill
process will never consider itself nor system processes (kernel threads) as
a potential match.
EXIT STATUS
The
pgrep
and
pkill
utilities
return one of the following values upon exit:
0
One or more processes were matched.
1
No processes were matched.
2
Invalid options were specified on the command line.
3
An internal error occurred.
COMPATIBILITY
Historically the option
``-j 0
''
means any jail, although in other utilities such as
ps(1)
jail ID
0
has the opposite meaning, not in jail.
Therefore
``-j 0
''
is deprecated, and its use is discouraged in favor of
``-j any
''
The
pkill
and
pgrep
utilities
first appeared in
Nx 1.6 .
They are modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun
Solaris 7.
They made their first appearance in
Fx 5.3 .
