How to kill all processes with the same name?

Question

I want to kill all processes with the same name that belong to a user, for example:

$ps -u user_1
2345 myapp
2346 myapp
2347 myapp
2348 myapp2
2349 myapp

I want to kill all "myapp" processes that belong to "user_1", how can I do this?

Solution

You can use the pkill command.

pkill -u user_1 myapp

Note that myapp2 won't be killed as it has a different name.

Comments

[cpast]

To kill all processes, use killall. I'm not kidding: man killall.

[dinesh]

Here's a link to a discussion on askubuntu that might answer your question.

[Arpit]

and @cpast is right. killall will do the same.

[rbaleksandar]

@Aprit I don'T believe that killall supports wildcards, which forces you to be very precise when passing the name of the process you would like to terminate.