prenice(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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PKILL(1)                NetBSD General Commands Manual                PKILL(1)


NAME

     pkill, pgrep, prenice -- find or signal processes by name


SYNOPSIS

     pgrep [-filnqvx] [-d delim] [-G gid] [-g pgrp] [-P ppid] [-s sid]
           [-t tty] [-U uid] [-u euid] pattern ...
     pkill [-signal] [-filnvx] [-G gid] [-g pgrp] [-P ppid] [-s sid] [-t tty]
           [-U uid] [-u euid] pattern ...
     prenice [-l] priority pattern ...


DESCRIPTION

     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 prenice command searches the process table on the running system and
     sets the priority of all processes that match the criteria given on the
     command line.

     By default, matching applies to any substring of the command name
     (argv[0]), but options may be used to change this.  Patterns are speci-
     fied using extended regular expressions (see re_format(7)).

     The following options are available for pkill and pgrep:

     -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 gid    Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in the
               comma-separated list gid.

     -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 sup-
               plied pattern.

     -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 match-
               ing process.

     -n        Match only the most recently created process, if any.

     -P ppid   Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID in the
               comma-separated list ppid.

     -s sid    Restrict matches to processes with a session ID in the comma-
               separated list sid.  The value zero is taken to mean the ses-
               sion 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 specified as a
               fully qualified path, in the form `ttyXX', or `pts/N', (where
               XX is any pair of letters, and N is a number), or the shortened
               forms `XX' or `N'.  A single dash (`-') matches processes not
               associated with a terminal.

     -U uid    Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in the comma-
               separated list uid.

     -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 specify-
               ing the signal to be sent instead of the default TERM.  This
               option is valid only when given as the first argument to pkill.

     The following option is also available for pgrep:

     -q        Quiet; do not write anything to standard output.

     The -l flag is also available for prenice.

     Note that a running pgrep, pkill, or prenice process will never consider
     itself or system processes (kernel threads) as a potential match.


IMPLEMENTATION NOTES

     The Sun Solaris implementation utilised procfs to obtain process informa-
     tion.  This implementation utilises kvm(3) instead.


EXIT STATUS

     pgrep, pkill, and prenice 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.


SEE ALSO

     grep(1), kill(1), ps(1), kill(2), sigaction(2), kvm(3), re_format(7),
     signal(7), renice(8)


HISTORY

     pkill and pgrep first appeared in NetBSD 1.6.  They are modelled after
     utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7.

     prenice was introduced in NetBSD 6.0.


AUTHORS

     Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>.

NetBSD 10.1                    October 29, 2022                    NetBSD 10.1