table of contents
KILL(2) | System Calls Manual | KILL(2) |
NAME¶
kill
—
LIBRARY¶
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)SYNOPSIS¶
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <signal.h>
int
kill
(pid_t
pid, int sig);
DESCRIPTION¶
Thekill
() system call sends the signal given by
sig to pid, a process or a group
of processes. The sig argument may be one of the signals
specified in sigaction(2) or it may be 0, in which case
error checking is performed but no signal is actually sent. This can be used
to check the validity of pid.
For a process to have permission to send a signal to a process designated by pid, the user must be the super-user, or the real or saved user ID of the receiving process must match the real or effective user ID of the sending process. A single exception is the signal SIGCONT, which may always be sent to any process with the same session ID as the sender. In addition, if the security.bsd.conservative_signals sysctl is set to 1, the user is not a super-user, and the receiver is set-uid, then only job control and terminal control signals may be sent (in particular, only SIGKILL, SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGALRM, SIGSTOP, SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, SIGTSTP, SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2).
- If pid is greater than zero:
- The sig signal is sent to the process whose ID is equal to pid.
- If pid is zero:
- The sig signal is sent to all processes whose group ID is equal to the process group ID of the sender, and for which the process has permission; this is a variant of killpg(2).
- If pid is -1:
- If the user has super-user privileges, the signal is sent to all processes
excluding system processes (with
P_SYSTEM
flag set), process with ID 1 (usually init(8)), and the process sending the signal. If the user is not the super user, the signal is sent to all processes with the same uid as the user excluding the process sending the signal. No error is returned if any process could be signaled.
For compatibility with System V, if the process number is negative but not -1, the signal is sent to all processes whose process group ID is equal to the absolute value of the process number. This is a variant of killpg(2).
RETURN VALUES¶
Thekill
() function returns the value 0 if
successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable
errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS¶
Thekill
() system call will fail and no signal will be
sent if:
SEE ALSO¶
getpgrp(2), getpid(2), killpg(2), sigaction(2), sigqueue(2), raise(3), init(8)STANDARDS¶
Thekill
() system call is expected to conform to
IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY¶
Thekill
() function appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
March 15, 2012 | Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64 |