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Name

killpg - send signal to a process group

Synopsis

#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 || _XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED

Description

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

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

Errors

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

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

Notes

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

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

Colophon

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