How to kill a shell script and processes it created?

Question

I run a shell script inside php (using shell_exec). I want to kill it and all processes it created when it is in operation. I know the shell script pid. Do you have any suggestion? I am using ubuntu, php as apache module.

Thank you.

Example:

#!/bin/bash
echo hello
sleep 20

When I kill my script (shell_exec("sudo kill -9 $pid")), the sleep process is not killed which is not desired.

In general killing the shell would kill also its child processes. Otherwise, learn about process groups. — Basile Starynkevitch, Aug 01 '13 at 04:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

1

use

pkill -TERM -P pid

will kill the child processes

see this answer

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

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answered Aug 01 '13 at 04:55

newkedison

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it kills the process pid and its children, but not grandchildren or below. – Sang Quang Nguyen Aug 01 '13 at 08:00
1

[anubhava's answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/17985574/1032255) below can kill all of them, or you can see other answer in [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/392022/1032255), such as [1](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3211182/1032255), [2](http://stackoverflow.com/a/15139734/1032255) – newkedison Aug 02 '13 at 03:00

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 01 '13 at 05:03

1

Use this kill command instead:

kill -- -$pid

to kill the running script and all its spawned children.

answered Aug 01 '13 at 05:03

anubhava

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i do. "sudo kill -- -3768", i got "Kill: No such process". – Sang Quang Nguyen Aug 01 '13 at 07:42
You can try it from command line first. I have tried with your script and it worked. – anubhava Aug 01 '13 at 09:09

How to kill a shell script and processes it created?

2 Answers2