kill
kill is a Linux command in the Process Management category, rated intermediate difficulty. Sends a signal to a process. Default signal is SIGTERM (terminate). The syntax is kill [options] PID. Key options and parameters: PID — process ID to signal. It returns none (signal sent). A practical example: kill 1234 # Gracefully terminate PID 1234 kill -9 1234 # Force kill (SIGKILL) kill -15 1234 # SIGTERM (polite termination) kill -HUP 1234 # Hang up (reload config) A close relative is ps, which reports a snapshot of current processes. A close relative is top, which real-time interactive process viewer. Updates every few seconds. A close relative is killall, which kills all processes matching a given name. More about this category: Linux process management commands — ps, top, kill, killall, pgrep, and more. Manage running processes and system resources. Related Process Management commands: ps, top, killall, pgrep, pkill, nice, renice, nohup.