Kill only one Java process

Question

I usually run few Java applications, one for server running locally and other for some IDE like NetBeans. And from time to time, after lots of redeployments, my server get stuck on OutOfMemoryException so I need to kill Java process in order to reboot.

So I do pkill -9 java but this also kills my running IDE which I don't want to. So how do I kill only application linked to running server and not the other ones?I assume that they all are running under same process but there has to be some way how to distuingish them.

look at your process table (via top or ps) and choose the right one and kill it by PID (kill -9 PID_number). — rush, Feb 13 '13 at 08:25
Oh yes, I can see that now. So I just need to kill process with right PID. Thanks a lot — Petr Mensik, Feb 13 '13 at 08:27
I need to automate this. How to get the PID for the particular program? — Nikhil VJ, Feb 26 '19 at 13:55

score 33 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 13 '13 at 08:39

33

For killing a process that is associated with multiple processes, you need to kill that by using process id associated with that process.

To get the process id of that java process run

ps -A |grep java

output of this command will give the list of java processes running on your system. Note down Process ID (PID) of that process whom you want to kill and run

kill -9 PID

edited Feb 13 '13 at 08:39

manatwork

31,277

answered Feb 13 '13 at 08:36

ifexploit

661

If you want to kill ALL java processes by one command ps ax | grep java | grep -v 'grep' | cut -d '?' -f1 | xargs kill -9 – Andrii Karaivanskyi Oct 26 '17 at 17:09

score 18 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 13 '13 at 14:52

18

IMO the best solution is:

pkill -9 -f <nameOfYourJavaAplication>

answered Feb 13 '13 at 14:52

Marek R

293

1

Perfect. I used ps -fC java to find nameOfYourJavaAplication (in -Dprogram.name) – cactuschibre Feb 04 '19 at 10:03

score 11 · Answer 3 · 2013-02-13T14:10:27.857

Instead of using ps and grep, you can use ps's -C flag to select all commands listed with the name 'java'. You may also want to use ps's -f flag to print the full command name of each listed process. That way, you can see what each java process is actually doing. Here is the command in full: ps -fC java.

You could also use pgrep to list all java processes. pgrep -a java will return the PID and full command line of each java process.

Once you have the PID of the command you wish to kill, use kill with the -9 (SIGKILL) flag and the PID of the java process you wish to kill. Java doesn't always stop when it receives a 'SIGTERM' signal (processes are allowed to handle 'SIGTERM'), so sending it the 'SIGKILL' signal, which makes init kill the program without warning it first, is often necessary.

For example, if ps -fC java returns

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
jeff      9014  8890  0 08:51 pts/0    00:00:00 java IDE
jeff     11775  8890  6 08:59 pts/0    00:00:00 java TestProgram

or psgrep -a java returns

9014 java IDE
11775 java TestProgram

and you wish to kill java TestProgram, you should run kill -9 11775.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 26 '19 at 14:03

1

If you want a script to find and kill your (specific) running program using a pattern from the command line of the program (and not just every java thing you got running), then:

pgrep -f pattern # shows the PID
pkill -f pattern

From https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/31111/249209

answered Feb 26 '19 at 14:03

Nikhil VJ

361

Notice that "pkill" was already mentioned in Marek R's answer of Feb 13 '13 – Jeff Schaller Feb 26 '19 at 14:07

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 19 '20 at 08:27

1

You can simply use

jps -l

command to get all of the process id's of java processes and then issue

kill PROCESS_ID

command

edited Oct 19 '20 at 08:27

AdminBee

22,803

answered Oct 16 '20 at 16:17

Arun Kumar N

111

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 10 '18 at 17:00

0

jps and jcmd are tools specialized in displaying only Java processes information and PIDs.

You can explore their options for a more detailed output.

answered Oct 10 '18 at 17:00

Muhammad Gelbana

1,643
8
20
26

Those only list themselves on my computer. – Alexis Wilke Dec 01 '18 at 03:09
Then, are you sure there are other Java processes running ?! – Muhammad Gelbana Dec 01 '18 at 20:34
Yes. I had Cassandra or Elassadra running when testing your command. – Alexis Wilke Dec 01 '18 at 22:36

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 01 '18 at 03:27

Here is a script one can use to automate the process.

Replace the <PROCESS_NAME> part with whatever java is executing.

#!/bin/sh
process=`ps -ef | grep -v awk | awk -e '/java.*<PROCESS_NAME>/ { print $2 }'`
kill ${process}

Note: I did not put the -9. I should not be required unless you capture signals and SIGTERM (the default) fails. I would also suggest you use the signal name which makes it easier to read:

kill -TERM ${process}

WARNING

Before executing the kill ... make sure that the $process variable gets set as expected. The ps -ef may different between Unices so awk may need to print a different parameter.

Note

The <PROCESS_NAME> could be changed into a variable. Just remember that if you have to type it on your command line each time, you are likely to make mistakes once in a while. I find it easier to have multiple copy of the script with the correct name.

Also important: notice the single quotes for the awk script. That means you need to close and reopen the string with the variable in between. Something like this should work (untested):

process=`ps -ef | grep -v awk | awk -e '/java.*'"${PROCESS_NAME}"'/ { print $2 }'`

Andrew · Answer 8 · 2020-10-02T22:09:30.910

My gradle projects don't call /bin/java directly. They create a symlink based on project name at runtime. In this example ps shows "java_my_app" instead of just "java". You can easily pkill or killall the correct JVM. This also helps identify processes in top, htop etc.

In all my Java projects' build.gradle files I add:

apply from: '../shared.gradle'

~/.gradle/gradle.properties:

org.gradle.java.home=/opt/jdk

settings.gradle:

rootProject.name = 'my_app'

shared.gradle:

import java.nio.file.Files
import java.nio.file.Path
tasks.withType(JavaExec) {
    def javaExecutablesPath = project.property('org.gradle.java.home') + '/bin'
    println "javaExecutablesPath=" + javaExecutablesPath
    Path j1 = Path.of(javaExecutablesPath).resolve("java")
    Path jLink = Path.of(javaExecutablesPath).resolve("java_" + rootProject.name)
    if (!Files.exists(j1)){
        println j1 + " is missing."
    } else if (Files.exists(jLink)) {
        println jLink + " exists, OK."
    } else {
        java.nio.file.Path p = Files.createSymbolicLink(jLink, j1)
        println "created " + p
    }
    executable = jLink.toFile()
}

Kill only one Java process

8 Answers8