Kill command don't work with process names [Upstream to coreutils]

[tqh]

In BeOS R5 I always used

kill Tracker

when needed.

Unfortunatly Haiku's 'kill' doesn't support this fantastic feature.

[diver]

Isn't killall is used for that?

[tqh]

This bug is about kill. killall might do that, but it's not really related to the bug.

[Adek336]

killall doesn't seem to be included with Haiku

~> killall
sh: killall: command not found

it'd be cool to have it, though.

[stpere]

In R5, if you have several instances of a process named, let say "test", did kill test terminate them all or the first it found, or?

[diver]

It would be nice to have this functionality in kill without adding one more tool.

[kallisti5]

Replying to diver:

It would be nice to have this functionality in kill without adding one more tool.

Yeah, but it really isn't the posix way. killall is more correct.

[anevilyak]

Replying to kallisti5:

Yeah, but it really isn't the posix way. killall is more correct.

That may be the case, but we're not always aiming to limit ourselves to exactly what the posix spec says. In this case, I'd say it's more convenient to the user to also support it in kill, which I might add R5 did as well.

[kallisti5]

Replying to anevilyak:

Replying to kallisti5:

Yeah, but it really isn't the posix way. killall is more correct.

That may be the case, but we're not always aiming to limit ourselves to exactly what the posix spec says. In this case, I'd say it's more convenient to the user to also support it in kill, which I might add R5 did as well.

Ah.. if R5 did it then yeah, kill may be the better place for this :)

[Prasad]

Replying to kallisti5:

Replying to anevilyak:

Replying to kallisti5:

Yeah, but it really isn't the posix way. killall is more correct.

That may be the case, but we're not always aiming to limit ourselves to exactly what the posix spec says. In this case, I'd say it's more convenient to the user to also support it in kill, which I might add R5 did as well.

Ah.. if R5 did it then yeah, kill may be the better place for this :)

killall has lots of switches for example killing group, regex search, checking the process running specific path. If kill command cannot support all of them, then I would suggest we do both.

I am not sure all the options supported by kill on R5. It would be great if anyone can print the usage message for kill command.

[diver]

$ kill
Usage : kill [-SIGNAME] pid1 [pid2 ...]
        where SIGNAME is one of INT, HUP, KILL, etc

[Prasad]

Replying to diver:

$ kill
Usage : kill [-SIGNAME] pid1 [pid2 ...]
        where SIGNAME is one of INT, HUP, KILL, etc

Seems like R5 too does not support kill <name>. There is no such option.

[diver]

Nah, R5 does support this feature even though it's not exposed in its' usage text.
In other words kill Tracker worked fine.

[leavengood]

I think adding name support to kill is fine, but in general for this sort of thing "hey Tracker QUIT" is nicer, at least for BApplications.

[diver]

Well hey can't be used to kill processes.

[Prasad]

Replying to diver:

Nah, R5 does support this feature even though it's not exposed in its' usage text.
In other words kill Tracker worked fine.

Haiku uses kill command which is by default built into the shell (not /bin/kill). The code in this command does not access the system wide list of processes. It works mostly with the list of processes ran on the current shell. One one exception to this is when kill is invoked with a pid, however it directly uses the PID and does no search.

We can add a special case for kill <name> and write the code to look for all the processes running in the system. However, that defeats the purpose of using shell builtin command.

After a small modification in the code, it was possible to kill the current shell jobs using process name. However, it did not kill processes ran by on other shell. For example:

~> jobs                     # NOTE NO JOBS RUNNING IN BACKGROUND

~> ps
Team                                                  Id #Threads  Gid  Uid
kernel_team                                            1       32    0    0
/boot/system/servers/registrar                        48        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/debug_server                     55        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/net_server                       56        4    0    0
/boot/system/servers/app_server                       57       26    0    0
/boot/system/servers/syslog_daemon                    72        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/input_server                     84        9    0    0
/boot/system/servers/mount_server                     94        1    0    0
/boot/system/Tracker                                 106        7    0    0
/boot/system/Deskbar                                 107        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_server                    108        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/midi_server                     109        3    0    0
/boot/system/servers/print_server                    110        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/cddb_daemon                     112        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/notification_server             113        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/power_daemon                    114        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_addon_server              152        5    0    0
/boot/system/apps/LaunchBox                          217        2    0    0
/boot/system/apps/Terminal                           242        6    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         246        1    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         263        1    0    0
/bin/sleep 10000                                     278        1    0    0
/bin/ps                                              279        1    0    0

~> kill -9 sleep
bash: kill: sleep: no such job

~> sleep 1000 &           # RAN A PROCESS IN BACKGROUND
[1] 281

~> ps
Team                                                  Id #Threads  Gid  Uid
kernel_team                                            1       32    0    0
/boot/system/servers/registrar                        48        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/debug_server                     55        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/net_server                       56        4    0    0
/boot/system/servers/app_server                       57       26    0    0
/boot/system/servers/syslog_daemon                    72        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/input_server                     84        9    0    0
/boot/system/servers/mount_server                     94        1    0    0
/boot/system/Tracker                                 106        7    0    0
/boot/system/Deskbar                                 107        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_server                    108        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/midi_server                     109        3    0    0
/boot/system/servers/print_server                    110        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/cddb_daemon                     112        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/notification_server             113        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/power_daemon                    114        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_addon_server              152        5    0    0
/boot/system/apps/LaunchBox                          217        2    0    0
/boot/system/apps/Terminal                           242        6    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         246        1    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         263        1    0    0
/bin/sleep 10000                                     278        1    0    0
/bin/sleep 1000                                      281        1    0    0
/bin/ps                                              282        1    0    0


~> jobs                            # ONE JOB RUNNING
[1]+  Running                 sleep 1000 &

~> kill -9 sleep
killing this process.

~> jobs
[1]+  Kill Thread             sleep 1000

~> ps
Team                                                  Id #Threads  Gid  Uid
kernel_team                                            1       32    0    0
/boot/system/servers/registrar                        48        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/debug_server                     55        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/net_server                       56        4    0    0
/boot/system/servers/app_server                       57       26    0    0
/boot/system/servers/syslog_daemon                    72        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/input_server                     84        9    0    0
/boot/system/servers/mount_server                     94        1    0    0
/boot/system/Tracker                                 106        7    0    0
/boot/system/Deskbar                                 107        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_server                    108        6    0    0
/boot/system/servers/midi_server                     109        3    0    0
/boot/system/servers/print_server                    110        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/cddb_daemon                     112        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/notification_server             113        2    0    0
/boot/system/servers/power_daemon                    114        1    0    0
/boot/system/servers/media_addon_server              152        5    0    0
/boot/system/apps/LaunchBox                          217        2    0    0
/boot/system/apps/Terminal                           242        6    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         246        1    0    0
/bin/bash -l                                         263        1    0    0
/bin/sleep 10000                                     278        1    0    0
/bin/ps                                              283        1    0    0

To summarize

---

1. Changes to support name killing are possible in builtin, however they are not recommended (according to me).

2. We can do necessary modification in the non-builtin kill command. However, the command must be invoked using full path of the command /bin/kill

3. Change /bin/kill and remove bulitin kill.

[diver]

BeOS R5:

$ type kill
kill is hashed (/bin/kill)

Haiku:

~> type kill
kill is a shell builtin

[phoudoin]

The simple fact that there is not /bin/kill under Haiku is already a potential binary compatibility issue, if a BeOS app was running it outside a shell context (read exec() vs system() for example).

So I'm for moving to genuine /bin/kill command tool and, obviously, add process name support in the... well, same process ;-)

[diver]

Could anyone review this patch please?

[leavengood]

+1 to this patch, with the exception that some of the variable names in the new functions in kill are too short (e and n in is_number(), and tm, tc, p and q in kill_by_name().) In addition the "int l" in kill_by_name is not used, as far as I can see.

Overall, very nice patch Prasad! If Prasad is around and willing to fix the variable names, please do. Otherwise I'll apply this patch and fix the variable names myself before the end of the week.

[Giova84]

Any news on this ticket? Would be a very useful feature the ability to kill a process by its name! :-)

[phoudoin]

Well, I guess leavengood's week is not ended yet ;-) If he don't beat me, I'll fix and apply it.

[phoudoin]

Applied with some style and code cleanup in hrev45523. Thanks.

[Giova84]

Hey Phoudoin, thanks to you for this little but very useful improvement! :-)

[phoudoin]

Re-opened to not forget this should make this upstream compliant, as suggested by mmu_man.

[phoudoin]

Replying to Giova84:

Hey Phoudoin, thanks to you for this little but very useful improvement! :-)

What's 5 years waiting for such improvement? ;-)

[waddlesplash]

The "kill" command now uses the Bash builtin. Also, GNU would not accept our patch anyway, as they have another utility ("killall") that does this.

If you're experiencing some other problem with the patched Bash kill, please file a ticket at HaikuPorts.