How to kill multiple processes at once with grep

Last updated on November 18, 2020 by Dan Nanni

There are cases where you want to kill multiple processes that match a certain pattern in their command line strings. For example, suppose you want to kill all processes that are running commands with keyword jppf in their arguments.

$ ps aux | grep jppf

xmodulo   3324  0.1  2.9 156524 15176 pts/0    Sl   22:16   0:01 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/bin/java -Xmx32m -Djppf.config=jppf-driver.properties -Dlog4j.configuration=log4j-driver.properties -Djava.util.logging.config.file=config/logging-driver.properties -classpath /home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/config:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jmxremote_optional.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-common-node.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-common.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-server.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar org.jppf.server.DriverLauncher
xmodulo   3338  0.3  4.4 391484 22792 pts/0    Sl   22:16   0:03 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/bin/java -cp /home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/config:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jmxremote_optional.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-common-node.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-common.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/jppf-server.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-driver/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar -Djppf.config=jppf-driver.properties -Dlog4j.configuration=log4j-driver.properties -Xmx256m -Djava.util.logging.config.file=config/logging-driver.properties org.jppf.server.JPPFDriver 59216
xmodulo   3388  0.1  2.9 139144 15064 pts/0    Sl   22:19   0:01 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/bin/java -Xmx16m -Dlog4j.configuration=log4j-node.properties -Djppf.config=jppf-node.properties -Djava.util.logging.config.file=config/logging-node.properties -classpath /home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/config:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/jmxremote_optional.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/jppf-common-node.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar org.jppf.node.NodeLauncher
xmodulo   3402  0.1  3.9 257980 20288 pts/0    Sl   22:19   0:01 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/bin/java -cp /home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/config:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/jmxremote_optional.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/jppf-common-node.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar:/home/xmodulo/JPPF-3.2.2-node/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar -Djppf.config=jppf-node.properties -Dlog4j.configuration=log4j-node.properties -Xmx128m -Djava.util.logging.config.file=config/logging-driver.properties org.jppf.node.NodeRunner 49204

Here is a single command that will kill all processes at once, whose names contain <keyword>. Replace <keyword> with your own.

$ kill -9 `ps aux | grep <keyword> | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`

The command line inside a pair of backtick characters (i.e., ps aux .... '{print $2}') will print out a list of process IDs that are matched with grep. The result is then used by the outer command kill. The grep -v grep is to exclude a self match (i.e., grep command itself) from a list of matched processes.

One caveat with this command is that when you are running it in a shell script, make sure to use bash, not sh.

If you are running the following script with sh:

#!/bin/sh
kill -9 `ps aux | grep jppf | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`

You will get kill: Illegal number: error. The command line inside a pair of backticks is returning a multi-line response, and it appears that sh is not able to handle it. But bash can. So the following script should be okay.

#!/bin/bash
kill -9 `ps aux | grep jppf | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`

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