Linux - Kill process by path

Question

How can I kill a process by its executable's absolute file path? Hence, I want to kill all processes that were created from an executable at a given location?

ANSWER:

kill $(ps aux | grep '<absolute executable path>' | awk '{print $2}')

Answer 1

You could use pkill(1) (or perhaps killall(1)...)

If you are coding a program you might consider using proc(5). You would then opendir(3) then loop on readdir(3) the /proc/ directory (use also stat(2) and don't forget the closedir(3)). There are pathological cases (a self-removing program).

Answer 2

function killpath {
    ps aux |  awk '{print $2"\t"$11}' | grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$' | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -SIGTERM
}

Usage:

killpath /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

What it does:

• ps aux: List processes
• awk '{print $2"\t"$11}': get column 2 (PID) and 11 (Executable) and separate them by a \t tab character
• grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$': Match a regex
  • ^: Beginning of line
  • \d+: one or more digits
  • \t: Tab character introduced previously
  • "$1" The input to the function, e.g. /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
  • $: End of line
• awk '{print $1}': Get only the 1st column, the Process ID.
• xargs: transform linebreaks to spaces

Here is how that looks on data:

# killpath /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

# ps aux
# USER           PID    %CPU %MEM  VSZ     RSS       TT  STAT STARTED   TIME     COMMAND
luckydonald      23265  04,6 10,3  9222008 1736020   ??  S    Sat10am   45:48.77 /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox -foreground
luckydonald      23266  02,0 05,3  5743400  362344   ??  R    Sat10am   11:52.52 /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox -foreground
luckydonald      42128  04,5 00,2  4337884   35608 s002  S+    1:17am    0:06.84 /usr/local/Cellar/docker-compose/1.23.2/libexec/bin/python3.7 /usr/local/bin/docker-compose logs -f --tail 100 r2tg

# awk '{print $2"\t"$11}'
23265   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
23266   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
42128   /usr/local/Cellar/docker-compose/1.23.2/libexec/bin/python3.7

# 1="/Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox"
# grep -E '^\d+\t'"$1"'$'
23265   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox
23266   /Applications/Waterfox.app/Contents/MacOS/waterfox

#  awk '{print $1}'
23265
23266

# xargs
23265 23266

# xargs kill -SIGTERM
kill -SIGTERM 23265 23266