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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON


KILLPG(2)                     Linux Programmer's Manual                     KILLPG(2)

NAME         top

       killpg - send signal to a process group

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <signal.h>

       int killpg(int pgrp, int sig);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       killpg(): _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500

DESCRIPTION         top

       killpg() sends the signal sig to the process group pgrp.  See signal(7) for a
       list of signals.

       If pgrp is 0, killpg() sends the signal to the calling process's process
       group.  (POSIX says: If pgrp is less than or equal to 1, the behavior is
       undefined.)

       For a process to have permission to send a signal it must either be privileged
       (under Linux: have the CAP_KILL capability), or the real or effective user ID
       of the sending process must equal the real or saved set-user-ID of the target
       process.  In the case of SIGCONT it suffices when the sending and receiving
       processes belong to the same session.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
       appropriately.

ERRORS         top

       EINVAL Sig is not a valid signal number.

       EPERM  The process does not have permission to send the signal to any of the
              target processes.

       ESRCH  No process can be found in the process group specified by pgrp.

       ESRCH  The process group was given as 0 but the sending process does not have
              a process group.

CONFORMING TO         top

       SVr4, 4.4BSD (the killpg() function call first appeared in 4BSD),
       POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES         top

       There are various differences between the permission checking in BSD-type
       systems and System V-type systems.  See the POSIX rationale for kill().  A
       difference not mentioned by POSIX concerns the return value EPERM: BSD
       documents that no signal is sent and EPERM returned when the permission check
       failed for at least one target process, while POSIX documents EPERM only when
       the permission check failed for all target processes.

       On Linux, killpg() is implemented as a library function that makes the call
       kill(-pgrp, sig).

SEE ALSO         top

       getpgrp(2), kill(2), signal(2), capabilities(7), credentials(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.23 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
       at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                 2007-07-26                            KILLPG(2)