KILL
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 23 July 1993
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NAME
kill - send signal to a process
SYNOPSIS
#include <signal.h>
int kill(pid_t pid, int sig);
DESCRIPTION
kill()
can be used to send any signal to any process group or process.
If pid is positive, then signal sig is sent to pid.
In this case, 0 is returned on success, or a negative value on error.
If pid equals -1, then sig is sent to every process except
for the first one, from higher numbers in the proc table to lower. In
this case, 0 is returned on success, or the last error condition from
send_sig() is returned.
If pid is less than -1, then sig is sent to every process
in the process group -pid. In this case, the number of processes
the signal was sent to is returned, or a negative value for failure.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and
errno
is set appropriately.
ERRORS
- EINVAL
-
An invalid signal is sent.
- ESRCH
-
The pid or process group does not exist.
- EPERM
-
The effective userid of the process calling
kill()
is not equal to the effective userid of
pid,
unless the superuser called
kill().
BUGS
It is impossible to send a signal to task number one, the init process, for
which it has not installed a signal handler. This is done to assure the
system is not brought down accidentally.
CONFORMING TO
SVID, AT&T, POSIX.1, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3
SEE ALSO
_exit(2), exit(2), signal(2), signal(7)
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- RETURN VALUE
-
- ERRORS
-
- BUGS
-
- CONFORMING TO
-
- SEE ALSO
-
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