kill

Send a signal to a process — commonly used to terminate processes.

high risk

interactive breakdown — edit the command and press Explain
$ 
⚠ Risks & cautions
Safer / dry-run alternatives
ps -p <pid> -o pid,ppid,user,etime,cmdConfirm what you are about to kill.
kill -TERM <pid>Ask the process to stop cleanly first.
What it does

kill sends signals to processes by PID. Default is SIGTERM (15) which requests graceful shutdown. SIGKILL (9) cannot be caught and forces immediate termination — use as last resort. SIGHUP (1) typically reloads service config.

Common flags
FlagMeaning
-9 -SIGKILLForce kill immediately — no cleanup, potential data loss
-15 -SIGTERMGraceful termination request (default signal)
-1 -SIGHUPHangup — typically reloads service configuration
-lList all available signal names and numbers
Examples
kill -15 1234Gracefully terminate process 1234 (gives it time to clean up) · explain & risk-check →
kill -9 $(pgrep -f stuck_process)Force-kill process by name when SIGTERM failed · explain & risk-check →
kill -1 $(pgrep nginx)Send SIGHUP to nginx to reload configuration without restart · explain & risk-check →
Pro tip

Always try SIGTERM first, wait 5s, then SIGKILL. Jumping to -9 can corrupt databases and leave stale lock files behind.

Related
pkill killall pgrep ps systemctl
Open the full explainer →More in System & Processes

Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man kill for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.