How-To Geek
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.
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Comments (20)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 09/25/06
ps -ef | grep irssi | grep -v grep | xargs kill
would work too
I just use this: killall (program name). Works fine for me.
Thanks Nicholas. It is working
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!
Perfect! Just what i was looking for.
Thanks!
Thanks for helping this newbie out.
i am wondering whether a kill command can be piped ot not
i tried the command
ps | grep hbuild_topic | cut -c-6 | kill to kill all the process with the name hbuild_topic i wasnt able to kill the process
or ps aux | grep irssi | grep -v grep | awk ‘{print$2}’ | xargs kill -9
Force Quit launcher in the panel works for me
hi there. very new with ubuntu 10.xx. is there a gui app for forcing a program closed. I was looking for the “Force Quit Launcher” Kevin has posted but I’m unable to find it.
Please advise,
and take it easy on me. took 13 years to switch over.
Regards;
Justin
@JR:
Open up Keyboard Shortcuts
(System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts)
Click Add, name it something like ‘Force Quit’; the command to use is xkill
Then click on the command in the list and hold down CTRL+ALT+K: now, whenever you press CTRL+ALT+K, a little white cross will replace your cursor. and when you click on a window it will close.
I do the following when killall “process name” doesn’t work:
1. type the command “ps aux” (brings up a list of processes by pid and name)
2. right click and copy all from the terminal
3. create a text file “vim aux.txt”
4. press “i” for insert
5. press shift-insert keys
6. press escape key
7. press / key and enter the process name you are looking for
8. use the n key to find the next process with that name until you can’t find anymore
9. write down the pids or type them in notes
10. exit out of the txt file back to the command line
11. kill “pid1″ “pid2″ “pid3″ and so on on the same line
12. rm aux.txt (or whatever you named it.)
This is much faster once you get used to it than it looks here. The advantage is that it gets all processes running under that name. Killall doesn’t always work. You don’t have to remember the other commands this way too.
Love UNIX!
Nice! I like the “grep -v grep” part. :-)
A little long for my tastes, but this worked the first time!
kill `ps -ef | grep irssi | grep -v grep | awk ‘{print $2}’`
Thanks for the suggestions.
my ubuntu 11.04 the flash will crush. what i shall i do
I always use this command to kill any ‘naughty’ apps:
# pgrep appName | xargs kill -9
hi all;
Im actually a beginner in Ubuntu, here is a process named ‘exe’ whose status is ‘zombie’ :D
how can I stop this process?! I should say that non of the commands above worked!
other information about this process are:
memory ‘N/A’ and waiting channel ‘do_exit’
your attention would be appreciated :)
hey how to kill root password and dis able it forever??
i don’t know how to disable it forever, but i know how you can set it to what you want…open terminal and type sudo passwd, then it will ask you to enter it, then ask what you want the new root pass to be, then confirm it, and that should take care of it..hope that helps
Cheers! You’ve helped me fix a problem I’ve had for ages, being unable to stop a running gamesever