Kill a Process by Process Name from Ubuntu Command Line

There are a number of ways to kill a process if you know the name of the process. Here’s a couple different ways you can accomplish this. We are going to assume that the process we are trying to kill is named irssi

kill $(pgrep irssi)

killall -v irssi

pkill irssi

kill `ps -ef | grep irssi | grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’`

These techniques can be useful in shell scripts, where you wouldn’t know the process ID and would need to restart or kill a process.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 09/25/06 and tagged with: Shell Scripts, SysAdmin, Ubuntu

Daily Email Updates

You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:

Name:
Email:

Similar Articles	Featured Wiki Articles
Kill Processes from the Windows Command Line Kill Linux Processes Easier with pkill Reload the Gnome or KDE Panels Without Restarting (Linux) Using htop to Monitor System Processes on Linux How Do I Kill All the iexplore.exe Processes at Once?	Windows OS Code Names Get Diablo II Working on Windows Vista Why Codec Packs Are Bad Easter Eggs Tweaking a Dedicated Virtual Web Server Disable Smart Quotes in Word 2007
Latest Software Reviews	Quick Linux Tips
Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux Folder Castle 4.1 Wondershare PPT2DVD Sothink Video Converter for Adobe Flash	Copy Just the Last Two Days of Files to Another Directory Fixing Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory Mounting a Shared VirtualBox Folder from an Ubuntu Guest Change the Hostname on a Redhat Linux Machine
Geek Arcade	Popular Forum Threads
Frantic Boxhead: The Zombie Wars BubbleQuod Exorbis 2	how do i delete Vista ? Question about Operating Systems. Memory upgrade doesn't work Anyone with X-FI Series: Will get very little Support from Creative Labs!

Comments (6)

1. March 6, 2007 9:52 am
   sven

   ps -ef | grep irssi | grep -v grep | xargs kill
   would work too

2. May 20, 2007 2:47 pm
   Nicholas

   I just use this: killall (program name). Works fine for me.

3. June 5, 2008 2:01 am
   Mahmut

   Thanks Nicholas. It is working

4. February 12, 2009 4:53 pm
   Kar.ma

   Thank you! My wine was crashing, and my gnome-system-monitor couldn’t close it (under Ubuntu 8.10). I could close it with
   killall -v wineserver

   My CPU was quickly raising temperature, so thank you for this helpful simple short guide!

5. April 9, 2009 6:40 am
   Matthew Glennon

   Perfect! Just what i was looking for.

   Thanks!

6. April 29, 2009 4:35 pm
   tryntobegeek

   Thanks for helping this newbie out.