CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxprocessexecutablekill
goocreations
goocreations

Reputation: 3066

Linux - Kill process by path

How can I kill a process by its executable's absolute file path? Hence, I want to kill all processes that were created from an executable at a given location?

ANSWER:

kill $(ps aux | grep '<absolute executable path>' | awk '{print $2}')

Upvotes: 10

Views: 13168

Answers (4)

sachinsaini
sachinsaini

Reputation: 73

After searching a lot didn't find any solution that works. I resolved my issue may it will work for you.

If there are multiple applications with the same name but different locations then first find out the process id by giving the complete path to it. Suppose there are two applications running whose locations are:

  1. /home/ubuntu/Sachin/printMsg
  2. /home/ubuntu/Sachin/second/printMsg

(printMsg is the name of the application.) We want to close 1st one then we can write the following command:

kill $(pidof "/home/ubuntu/Sachin/printMsg")

Explanation:

Command pidof "/home/ubuntu/Sachin/printMsg" returns process id. and using that process id we can use the kill command to close the application.

Upvotes: 0

Dmitry77
Dmitry77

Reputation: 61

ANSWER:

kill $(pgrep -f /absolute/executable/path)

Upvotes: 6

luckydonald
luckydonald

Reputation: 6856

function killpath {
    ps aux |  awk '{print $2"\t"$11}' | grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$' | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -SIGTERM
}

Usage:

killpath /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

What it does:

  • ps aux: List processes
  • awk '{print $2"\t"$11}': get column 2 (PID) and 11 (Executable) and separate them by a \t tab character
  • grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$': Match a regex
    • ^: Beginning of line
    • \d+: one or more digits
    • \t: Tab character introduced previously
    • "$1" The input to the function, e.g. /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
    • $: End of line
  • awk '{print $1}': Get only the 1st column, the Process ID.
  • xargs: transform linebreaks to spaces

Here is how that looks on data:

# killpath /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

# ps aux
# USER           PID    %CPU %MEM  VSZ     RSS       TT  STAT STARTED   TIME     COMMAND
luckydonald      23265  04,6 10,3  9222008 1736020   ??  S    Sat10am   45:48.77 /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox -foreground
luckydonald      23266  02,0 05,3  5743400  362344   ??  R    Sat10am   11:52.52 /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox -foreground
luckydonald      42128  04,5 00,2  4337884   35608 s002  S+    1:17am    0:06.84 /usr/local/Cellar/docker-compose/1.23.2/libexec/bin/python3.7 /usr/local/bin/docker-compose logs -f --tail 100 r2tg

# awk '{print $2"\t"$11}'
23265   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
23266   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
42128   /usr/local/Cellar/docker-compose/1.23.2/libexec/bin/python3.7

# 1="/Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox"
# grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$'
23265   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
23266   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

#  awk '{print $1}'
23265
23266

# xargs
23265 23266

# xargs kill -SIGTERM
kill -SIGTERM 23265 23266

Upvotes: 3

Basile Starynkevitch
Basile Starynkevitch

Reputation: 1

You could use pkill(1) (or perhaps killall(1)...)

If you are coding a program you might consider using proc(5). You would then opendir(3) then loop on readdir(3) the /proc/ directory (use also stat(2) and don't forget the closedir(3)). There are pathological cases (a self-removing program).

Upvotes: 1

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