Kill Script Using Linux Shell (bash)

Here is a script written in bash that kills a process with the signature provided as a parameter.

NOTES:
- In RedHat Linux you can use /bin/sh as sh does not exist in Linux and it is pointing to bash instead
- In UBUNTU you need to specify /bin/bash as /bin/sh is pointing to dash by default
- I did not have a chance to test this script in other UNIX systems

#!/bin/bash # Script name itself (we will ignore it, # as we do not want to kill our own script) mysignature=$0 # Signature of a process to kill procsig=$1 echo Lookig to kill processes with signature :$procsig: # Trim spaces read -rd '' param1 <<< "$procsig" # Check that we suuplied a process signature, # and that it is not empty if [ "$param1" = "" ] then echo Need process name pattern exit 1 fi echo Loking up process signature :$procsig: # Get PID(s) of the process(es) to be killed processes= \ `ps auxwww | grep " $procsig" | grep -v grep | grep -v $mysignature | cut -c10-15` if [ "$processes" = "" ] then echo No process like :$procsig: running exit 1 fi echo Killing PIDs $processes echo $processes | xargs -t kill

To run this script- create a file called (for example) stop_script.sh, copy the provided script into that file.

Run it (for example to kill all vi sessions) as follows

stop_script.sh "vi"