C, kill all processes

Question

I have a project for school and I need some help. I'm working in C and I have a server and a client. In server I make a new process for each client with fork. My question is: if I close the server with CTRL+C, how do I kill all the remaining processes ? Thanks

Do you want a shell-script that does it, or do it in the server program? — Some programmer dude, Jan 28 '13 at 08:26

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:28

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You can store their pids after they are created and then, when quitting, signal sigterm or sigkill to them.

You can do it through shell - killall is what you are searching for under linux.

You could use threads instead of processes (could you? what do the project details say?) and communicate through variables.

answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:28

Dariusz

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yes, I could use threads but I already finished the project.. a lot of work if i want to modify it for using threads. I have only this thing to do to finish it, and I know that my teacher will try it: CTRL+C on server, clients still running, that's no good.., thanks for your answer, i will try it – Jones Jan 28 '13 at 09:56

sheu · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-28T08:31:32.850

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This will do it for you in the shell:

killall -15 <process name>

In C, you can try:

kill(0, SIGKILL)

in the SIGINT signal handler for your main server process to kill all the processes in its process group, which should include its children.

edited Jan 28 '13 at 08:31

answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:26

sheu

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autistic · Answer 3 · 2013-01-28T08:45:49.183

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I would suggest that this'd be implementation-defined. You'll need to keep the PIDs for the forks, hook the signal that CTRL+C sends to your server (SIGINT in POSIX) and kill them using whichever method your OS recommends (kill in POSIX environments).

edited Jan 28 '13 at 08:45

answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:32

autistic

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:47

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When you kill a process alone, it will not kill the children.

You have to send the signal to the process group if you want all processes for a given group to receive the signal: kill -9 -parentpid. Otherwise, orphans will be linked to init,

answered Jan 28 '13 at 08:47

sr01853

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C, kill all processes

4 Answers4