[linux] How can I kill a process by name instead of PID?

I was asking myself the same question but the problem with the current answers is that they don't safe check the processes to be killed so... it could lead to terrible mistakes :)... especially if several processes matches the pattern.

As a disclaimer, I'm not a sh pro and there is certainly room for improvement.

So I wrote a little sh script :

#!/bin/sh

killables=$(ps aux | grep $1 | grep -v mykill | grep -v grep)
if [ ! "${killables}" = "" ]
then
  echo "You are going to kill some process:"
  echo "${killables}"
else
  echo "No process with the pattern $1 found."
  return
fi
echo -n "Is it ok?(Y/N)"
read input
if [ "$input" = "Y" ]
then
  for pid in $(echo "${killables}" | awk '{print $2}')
  do
    echo killing $pid "..."
    kill $pid 
    echo $pid killed
  done
fi

Examples related to linux

grep's at sign caught as whitespace How to prevent Google Colab from disconnecting? "E: Unable to locate package python-pip" on Ubuntu 18.04 How to upgrade Python version to 3.7? Install Qt on Ubuntu Get first line of a shell command's output Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:/var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running? Run bash command on jenkins pipeline How to uninstall an older PHP version from centOS7 How to update-alternatives to Python 3 without breaking apt?

Examples related to bash

Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script Zipping a file in bash fails How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default? Get first line of a shell command's output Fixing a systemd service 203/EXEC failure (no such file or directory) /bin/sh: apt-get: not found VSCode Change Default Terminal Run bash command on jenkins pipeline How to check if the docker engine and a docker container are running? How to switch Python versions in Terminal?

Examples related to shell

Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script Get first line of a shell command's output How to run shell script file using nodejs? Run bash command on jenkins pipeline Way to create multiline comments in Bash? How to do multiline shell script in Ansible How to check if a file exists in a shell script How to check if an environment variable exists and get its value? Curl to return http status code along with the response docker entrypoint running bash script gets "permission denied"

Examples related to kill

How to kill a nodejs process in Linux? What does 'killed' mean when a processing of a huge CSV with Python, which suddenly stops? how to kill hadoop jobs Why number 9 in kill -9 command in unix? How to kill a process on a port on ubuntu How to kill a child process by the parent process? How to kill all processes matching a name? How do I kill an Activity when the Back button is pressed? Terminating idle mysql connections How can I stop a running MySQL query?