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Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide

Sending Kill Signals to a Process

The kill command in UNIX enables the user to send a signal to a process. A signal is a message sent to a process to interrupt it and cause a response. If the process has been designed to respond to signals of the type sent it does so; otherwise, it terminates. There are 42 signals, as defined in the signal(5) man page. The following table lists some commonly used signal numbers/names and their meanings.

 Signal No. Signal Name  Meaning
 1 HUP Hangup (often used before logging out)
 2 INT Interrupt (same as pressing Control+C in a terminal session)
 9 KILL

Kill (terminates without cleanup) 

Only works if issued by process owner or super user (root) 

The program cannot respond to this signal; it must terminate 
 15 TERM

Kill (terminates gracefully after cleanup) 

Only works if issued by process owner or super user (root) 

The Kill menu item enables you to kill a process quickly by sending it a kill (9) signal. The Signal menu item gives you more control of the signal sent by the kill(1) command. For example you could send an INT signal or a HUP signal, and so on.

Caution - Caution -

You should only send a signal to a process if you understand the implications of doing so. For example, if you select the login shell and send a kill signal, you will suddenly log out. For further information on processes and job control, contact your system administrator or see the following:

To Kill A Process (Quick Kill)

  1. Select a process entry in the Process Manager scrolling pane.

  2. Choose Kill from the Process menu.

    Process Manager kills the process (and its child processes) provided that you have permission to do so; otherwise an error is displayed. Sometimes it takes several seconds for the process to terminate. You can tell that a process has been killed if it is not listed the next time Process Manager updates its display.

    Tip -

    The equivalent UNIX command is:

    kill -9 PID where PID is the process ID of the selected process.

    You can redefine the command performed by the Kill menu item to a different command by redefining the action labelled 'Kill' in the file:

    /usr/dt/appconfig/types/C/sdtprocess.dt

To Send a Signal to a Process

  1. Select a process entry in the Process Manager scrolling pane.

  2. Choose Signal from the Process menu.

    Process Manager displays a dialog box requesting you to specify the signals. You must supply at least one of the 42 signals defined in the signal(5) man page.

  3. Type the relevant signal number or name and click OK.

    Process Manager issues the signal command and closes the dialog box. No success message is issued. Killing a process typically kills its children.

Tip -

The equivalent UNIX command is: kill -signum_name PID

where -signum_name is the signal number or name, and PID is the process ID of the selected process.