killall5

killall5 is the SystemV killall command. It sends a signal to all processes except kernel threads and the processes in its own session, so it won't kill the shell that is running the script it was called from. Its primary (only) use is in the rc scripts found in the /etc/init.d directory.

killall5 can also be invoked as pidof(8), which is simply a (symbolic) link to the killall5 program.

The program return zero if it killed processes. It returns 2 if no process were killed, and 1 if it was unable to find any processes (/proc/ is missing).

Miquel van Smoorenburg