Kill A Process By Name

My favorite shell command is kill. Don't worry I'm not a serial killer.
If you know the process id and if you have enough permissions you can kill any process you want . It is easier to kill a process by name. Here is the command.


kill -9 `ps -ef | grep $1 | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`


kill -9 processId sends SIGKILL signal to specified process. You can use a list of process ids as kill command argument. kill -9 pid1 pid2 pid3

ps -ef|grep $1

Lists process that matches $1

ps -ef | grep $1 | grep -v grep

List process that matches $1 except the process that runs grep command

ps -ef | grep $1 | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}

Lists only process ids of processes that matches $1 except the process that runs grep command.

awk '{print $2}' lists the second column of the

ps -ef | grep $1 | grep -v grep 

command output.

Save kill -9 `ps -ef | grep $1 | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'` in a file called myKill.sh
Give execute permission to the myKill.sh file (chmod +x myKill.sh)
If you want to kill all java processes type

./myKill.sh java

Or you can use pgrep and pkill commands if they are available on your system.