Kill all process of particular user in Ubuntu?

Question

How to kill all process of one user?

When I make ps aux I obtain a list of process with several users, and I want to kill all process of user name1, for example. What's a command to do that in Ubuntu?

If the users are real persons this probably isn't a good idea. I also think you want to kill processes to save time. This is a very bad idea. For instance, the services in Ubuntu can be stopped using sudo service the-service-name stop. Killing processes may left corrupted files, databases, etc. — tiktak, Mar 28 '12 at 15:39

score 36 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 14:27

36

In this case, it's pretty simple, you can use killall to kill, or send any other signal, to a bunch of processes at once. One of the "filtering" options is the owner: killall --user name1

answered Mar 27 '12 at 14:27

njsg

13,495

I wasn't aware of the --user argument, thanks! – jmtd Mar 27 '12 at 14:32
5

It should be noted that killall in e.g Solaris Unix kills all running processes it can! See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killall – donothingsuccessfully Mar 27 '12 at 18:25
This essentially logged off on ubuntu 18. – Manohar Reddy Poreddy Apr 07 '19 at 18:06

score 26 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '12 at 18:33

26

Adding another option because nobody has mentioned it, and I don't like killall (using it on solaris can cause disaster).

pkill is more portable

pkill -u username

answered Aug 15 '12 at 18:33

phemmer

71,831

I don't find killall in Ubuntu, but pkill is already installed. – david.perez Nov 29 '17 at 10:19
Didn't see killall on a CentOS machine, but I've always seen pkill on the machines I've used. This is probably the more portable answer. – AmphotericLewisAcid Jul 26 '21 at 23:07

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 14:25

1

Install slay:

aptitude install slay

Then issue slay some-user.

Be aware that if you kill off stuff for users you don't know the purpose for, you may render your machine unusable (until you restart).

If you really don't want to install slay:

ps -e -o user,pid | grep '^some-user ' | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill

(wait a bit)

ps -e -o user,pid | grep '^some-user ' | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

answered Mar 27 '12 at 14:25

jmtd

9,305

1

Btw awk can grep something itself. No need to do grep smth | awk, cause you can use just awk '/smth/{...}' instead. – rush Mar 27 '12 at 14:36
Here is a handy little function for you. killuser () { ps faux| awk -v user=$1 '$1==user{ system("kill -9 " $2) }' ;}; – rcjohnson Mar 28 '17 at 16:20

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 16 '19 at 14:24

1

Identify the user, then killall -user <username>

They will have a bash (or similar) process associated with their login session killing that will kill their session.

To get a potentially better overview of what a user is doing - try pstree <username>

edited Apr 16 '19 at 14:24

Rui F Ribeiro

56,709
26
150
232

answered Mar 27 '12 at 16:21

SuperBOB

212

you need two dashes before user e.g. --user – jmtd Mar 28 '12 at 10:40

bougui · Answer 5 · 2020-11-26T21:00:47.000

1

According to man kill:

kill -9 -1
    Kill all processes you can kill.

To apply it to a different user:

su -l username kill -9 -1

edited Nov 26 '20 at 21:00

answered Nov 24 '20 at 08:47

bougui

131

Kill all process of particular user in Ubuntu?

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