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Kill all processes matching a name

caution rootProcessesdebian, ubuntu

Caution: This command changes the system. Understand what it does before you run it.

Adjust the values, the command updates live
root@server
pgrep -af "wp-cron.php" && pkill -f "wp-cron.php"

pgrep -af first shows all matching processes with PID and full command line, then pkill -f sends them SIGTERM. If there is no match, pkill is not run at all. Useful when many identical scripts have piled up.

Note: -f matches against the entire command line, so a pattern that is too short like php also hits php-fpm and can take down all websites. Without root, only your own processes are terminated.

Also searched as

  • kill all php processes
  • kill processes by name
  • pkill with pattern
  • stop hanging scripts

Related one-liners

All in Processes

Terminate a process and force kill only if needed

#kill 1234; sleep 5; kill -0 1234 2>/dev/null && kill -9 1234
cautionProcesses

Compare load average with the number of CPU cores

$uptime && nproc
harmlessProcesses

Count processes per user

$ps -eo user= | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
harmlessProcesses

Find out which process is using a port

#ss -tlnp 'sport = :80'
harmlessProcesses

Find out which processes are using swap

$for f in /proc/[0-9]*/status; do awk '/^Name:/ {n=$2} /^VmSwap:/ {print $2, "kB", n}' "$f"; done 2>/dev/null | sort -rn | head -15
harmlessProcesses

Find processes killed by the OOM killer

#journalctl -k --no-pager | grep -iE "out of memory|oom-kill|killed process"
harmlessProcesses

Read first, then run.

The commands on myline.de act directly on servers, files and databases. A wrong path or placeholder can delete data irreversibly or make a server unreachable.

  • All commands are provided without warranty and are not tested on every system.
  • Understand what a command does before running it, and check every placeholder.
  • Make a backup first and, if possible, try it on a test system.
  • You run commands at your own risk. Liability for damages is excluded to the extent permitted by law.