Process management is one of the important aspects of System Administration in Linux, and it includes killing of processes using the kill command.
Find and Kill Running Processes in Linux
What is a Process in Linux?
A process on a Linux system can be a running occurrence of an application or program. You can also refer to processes as tasks executing in the operating system.
When a process is running, it keeps on shifting from one state to another and a process can in one of the following states:
- Running: meaning the process is either executing or it is just set to be executed.
- Waiting: meaning that the process is waiting for an event or for a system resource to carry out a task.
There are two types of waiting process under Linux namely interruptible and uninterruptible.
A waiting process that can be interrupted by signals is called Interruptible, while a waiting process that is directly waiting on hardware conditions and cannot be interrupted under any conditions is called uninterruptible.
- Stopped: meaning that the process has been stopped, using a signal.
- Zombie: meaning the process has been stopped abruptly and is dead.
With this brief overview let us now look at ways of killing processes in a Linux system. We’ve already covered a few articles on ways to kill Linux running processes us using kill, pkill, killall and xkill, you can read them below.
- A Guide to Manage Linux Processes Using Kill, Pkill and Killall Commands
- How to Kill Unresponsive Linux Processes Using Xkill Command
When killing processes, the kill command is used to send a named signal to a named process or groups of processes. The default signal is the TERM signal.
Remember that the kill command can be a built-in function in many modern shells or external located at /bin/kill.
How to Find Process PID in Linux
In Linux every process on a system has a PID (Process Identification Number) which can be used to kill the process.
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