FreeBSD Man Pages

pgrep(1)

NAME

     pgrep, pkill -- find or signal processes by name

SYNOPSIS

     pgrep [-flnvx] [-G gid] [-M core] [-N system] [-P ppid] [-U uid]
	   [-d delim] [-g pgrp] [-s sid] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...
     pkill [-signal] [-fnvx] [-G gid] [-M core] [-N system] [-P ppid] [-U uid]
	   [-g pgrp] [-s sid] [-t tty] [-u euid] 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 following options are available:

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

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

     -M core   Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
	       core instead of the currently running system.

     -N system
	       Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
	       default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from.

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

     -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 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.

     -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.  This option can only be used with the pgrep com-
	       mand.

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

     -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.

     -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.

     If any pattern operands are specified, they are used as regular expres-
     sions to match the command name or full argument list of each process.
     If the -f option is not specified, then the pattern will attempt to match
     the command name.	However, presently FreeBSD will only keep track of the
     first 19 characters of the command name for each process.	Attempts to
     match any characters after the first 19 of a command name will quietly
     fail.

     Note that a running pgrep or pkill process will never consider itself nor
     system processes (kernel threads) as a potential match.

EXIT STATUS

     The pgrep and pkill utilities 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

     kill(1), killall(1), ps(1), kill(2), sigaction(2), re_format(7)

HISTORY

     The pkill and pgrep utilities first appeared in NetBSD 1.6.  They are
     modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7.
     They made their first appearance in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS

     Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>

FreeBSD 5.4			March 25, 2004			   FreeBSD 5.4

SPONSORED LINKS