Question 1

What does killall do?

Accepted Answer

Kill processes by name On Linux killall <name> sends a signal (TERM by default) to every process with that exact name.

Question 2

Is killall dangerous?

Accepted Answer

HIGH risk. Signals every process with a matching name — on Solaris-like systems killall kills ALL processes. Kills every instance on the host, including processes from other users or containers (if you are root). `killall` without a name on non-Linux Unixes terminates everything. Use SIGTERM first; SIGKILL skips cleanup and can corrupt data.

Question 3

How can I use killall more safely?

Accepted Answer

pgrep -a — Preview what would be killed killall -i -TERM — Interactive, graceful

Flag	Meaning
`-9`	Force kill (SIGKILL)
`-u`	Only the given user’s processes
`-i`	Ask before each kill
`-w`	Wait for processes to die
`-e`	Require exact match