killall(1M)

killall -- kill all active processes

Synopsis

/usr/sbin/killall [signal]

Description

killall is used by /usr/sbin/shutdown to kill all active processes not directly related to the shutdown procedure.

killall terminates all processes with open files so that the mounted filesystems will be unbusied and can be unmounted.

killall sends signal (see kill(1)) to all processes not belonging to the above group of exclusions. If no signal is specified, a default of 9 (SIGKILL) is used.

Files

/usr/sbin/shutdown

References

fuser(1M), kill(1), ps(1), shutdown(1M), signal(2), signal(5)

Notices

The killall command can be run only by a privileged user.

If the killall command is issued in an environment where a mouse is used, the mousemgr itself will be terminated. Subsequently, any process which uses a mouse (such as X Windows) will wait for the mousemgr indefinitely, since it no longer exists at this point. Therefore, it is advisable to terminate any process that uses a mouse before issuing the killall command.