Killall

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Command line utility

title: "Killall" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["unix-process--and-task-management-related-software"] description: "Command line utility" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killall" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Command line utility ::

**killall** is a command line utility available on Unix-like systems. There are two very different implementations.

  • The implementation supplied with genuine UNIX System V (including Solaris) and Linux sysvinit tools kills all processes that the user is able to kill, potentially shutting down the system if run by root.
  • The implementation supplied with the FreeBSD (including Mac OS X) and Linux psmisc tools is similar to the [pkill](pkill) and skill commands, killing only the processes specified on the command line.

Both commands operate by sending a signal, like the [kill](kill-command) program.

Example usage

Kill all processes named xmms: ::code[lang=bash] killall xmms ::

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

unix-process--and-task-management-related-software