How to kill all processes with a given partial name

Question

I want to kill all processes that I get by   ps aux   grep my pattern   How to do it   This does not work   pkill my pattern

User · Answer

Sounds bad    pkill  pidof myprocess    example     kill all java processes pkill  pidof java

User · Answer

it s best and safest to use pgrep -f with kill  or just pkill -f  greping ps s output can go wrong   Unlike using ps   grep with which you need to filter out the grep line by adding   grep -v or using pattern tricks  pgrep just won t pick itself by design   Moreover  should your pattern appear in ps s UID USER  SDATE START or any other column  you ll get unwanted processes in the output and kill them  pgrep pkill don t suffer from this flaw   also I found that killall -r  -regexp didn t work with my regular expression    pkill -f   python3 path to my script    man pkill

User · Answer

If you need more flexibility in selecting the processes use  for KILLPID in  ps ax   grep  my pattern    awk     print  1      do    kill -9  KILLPID  done   You can use grep -e etc

User · Answer

I took Eugen Rieck s answer and worked with it  My code adds the following    ps ax includes grep  so I excluded it with grep -Eiv  grep  Added a few ifs and echoes to make it human-readable    I ve created a file  named it killserver  here it goes      bin bash PROCESS TO KILL bin node PROCESS LIST  ps ax   grep -Ei   PROCESS TO KILL    grep -Eiv  grep    awk     print  1     KILLED  for KILLPID in  PROCESS LIST  do   if     -z  KILLPID   then     kill -9  KILLPID     echo  Killed PID   KILLPID       KILLED yes   fi done  if   -z  KILLED   then     echo  Didn t kill anything  fi   Results     myapp git  master  bash killserver Killed PID 3358 Killed PID 3382 Killed    myapp git  master  bash killserver Didn t kill anything

User · Answer

Found the best way to do it  for a server which does not support pkill  kill -9   ps ax   grep My pattern  fgrep -v grep   awk    print  1       You do not have to loop

User · Answer

Kill all processes matching the string  myProcessName    ps -ef   grep  myProcessName    grep -v grep   awk   print  2     xargs -r kill -9   Source  http   www commandlinefu com commands view 1138 ps-ef-grep-process-grep-v-grep-awk-print-2-xargs-kill-9  What s this code doing   The ps -ef produces a list of process id s on the computer visible to this user   The pipe grep filters that down for rows containing that string   The grep -v grep says don t match on the process itself doing the grepping   The pipe awk print says split the rows on default delimiter whitespace and filter to the second column which is our process id   The pipe xargs spins up a new process to send all those pid s to kill -9  ending them all   The above code is bad  dangerous  ugly and hackish for several reasons    If the code being force-ended is doing any database ops or secure transactions with low probability race conditions  some fraction of a percent of the time  atomicity of that transaction will be wrecked  producing undefined behavior   kill -9 takes no prisoners   If your code is sensitive to this  try replacing the xargs kill part with a transmitted flag that requests a graceful shutdown  and only if that request is denied  last-resort to kill -9 There s a non zero possibility that you will accidentally end the operating system or caused undefined behavior in an unrelated process  leading to whole system instability because ps -ef lists every possible process that could exist  and you can t be sure some weird 3rd party library shares your process name  or that in the time between read and execute kill -9  the processid had changed to something else  and now you ve accidentally ended some random process you didn t intend to      But  if you understand the risks and control for them with very unique names  and you re ok with a few dropped transactions or occasional corruption in data  then 99 9  of the time yer gonna be fine   If there s a problem  reboot the computer  make sure there aren t any process collisions   It s because of code like this that makes the tech support script   Have you tried restarting your computer  a level 5 meme

User · Answer

This is the way   kill -9   pgrep -d    -f chrome

User · Answer

Use pkill -f  which matches the pattern for any part of the command line  pkill -f my pattern

User · Answer

Also you can use killall -r my pattern  -r Interpret process name pattern as an extended regular expression   killall -r my pattern

User · Answer

You can use the following command to  kill -9   ps aux   grep  process    grep -v  grep    awk   print  2

User · Answer

You can use the following command to   ps -ef   grep -i myprocess   awk   print  2     xargs kill -9   or   ps -aux   grep -i myprocess   awk   print  2     xargs kill -9   It works for me

User · Answer

If you judge pkill -f PATTERN a bit too dangerous  I wrote ezkill a bash script that prompt you to choose which processes amongst those that match the PATTERN you want to kill

User · Answer

If you do not want to take headache of finding process id  use regexp to kill process by name  For example  to kill chrome following code will do the trick  killall -r chrome

User · Answer

you can use the following command to list the process   ps aux   grep -c myProcessName    if you need to check the count of that process then run   ps aux   grep -c myProcessName  grep -v grep    after which you can kill the process using   kill -9   ps aux   grep -e myProcessName   awk    print  2

[linux] How to kill all processes with a given partial name?

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