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 $NetBSD: kill.2,v 1.24 2021/02/08 01:00:49 nia Exp $

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 @(#)kill.2 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94

.Dd February 8, 2021
.Dt KILL 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm kill
.Nd send signal to a process
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
n signal.h .Ft int
.Fn kill "pid_t pid" "int sig"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn kill
function sends the signal given by
.Fa sig
to
.Fa pid ,
a
process or a group of processes.
.Fa sig
may be one of the signals specified in
.Xr sigaction 2
or it may be 0, in which case
error checking is performed but no
signal is actually sent.
This can be used to check the validity of
.Fa pid .

p
For a process to have permission to send a signal to a process designated
by
.Fa pid ,
the real or effective user ID of the receiving process must match
that of the sending process or the user must have appropriate privileges
(such as given by a set-user-ID program or the user is the super-user).
A single exception is the signal SIGCONT, which may always be sent
to any descendant of the current process.
l -tag -width Ds t If Fa pid No is greater than zero : .Fa sig
is sent to the process whose ID is equal to
.Fa pid .
t If Fa pid No is zero : .Fa sig
is sent to all processes whose process group ID is equal
to the process group ID of the sender, and for which the
process has permission;
this is a variant of
.Xr killpg 3 .
t If Fa pid No is -1 : If the user has super-user privileges,
the signal is sent to all processes excluding
system processes and the process sending the signal.
If the user is not the super user, the signal is sent to all processes
with the same uid as the user excluding the process sending the signal.
No error is returned if any process could be signaled, otherwise
.Er ESRCH
is returned.
.El

p
For compatibility with System V,
if the process number is negative but not -1,
the signal is sent to all processes whose process group ID
is equal to the absolute value of the process number.
This is a variant of
.Xr killpg 3 .

p
If
.Fa sig
is equal to
.Dv 0 ,
then no signal is sent to the process ID or process group ID, but error
checking is performed.
This can be used to check if the process ID or process group ID exist.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.
Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and
.Va errno
is set to indicate the error.
.Sh ERRORS
.Fn kill
will fail and no signal will be sent if:
l -tag -width Er t Bq Er EINVAL .Fa sig
is not a valid signal number.
t Bq Er EPERM The sending process is not the super-user and its effective
user id does not match the effective user-id of the receiving process.
When signaling a process group, this error is returned if any members
of the group could not be signaled.
t Bq Er ESRCH No process can be found corresponding to that specified by
.Fa pid ;
or the process id was given as 0
but the sending process does not have a process group.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr getpgrp 2 ,
.Xr getpid 2 ,
.Xr sigaction 2 ,
.Xr killpg 3 ,
.Xr signal 7
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Fn kill
function is expected to conform to
.St -p1003.1-90 .