Open System Services System Calls Reference Manual (G06.29+, H06.08+, J06.03+)

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kill(2) OSS System Calls Reference Manual

NAME

kill - Sends a signal to a process or group of processes

LIBRARY

G-series native OSS processes: system library

H-series OSS processes: implicit libraries

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h> /* optional except for POSIX.1 */

#include <signal.h>

int kill(

pid_t pid,

int signal);

PARAMETERS

pid Speciﬁes the process or group of processes to be sent a signal.

signal Speciﬁes the signal. If the signal parameter has the value 0 (zero, the null sig-

nal), error checking is performed but no signal is sent. The null signal can be

used to check the validity of the pid parameter.

DESCRIPTION

The kill() function sends the signal speciﬁed by the signal parameter to the process or group of

processes speciﬁed by the pid parameter.

To send a signal to another process, at least one of the following must be true:

• The real or effective user ID of the sending process must match the real or saved-set-user

ID of the receiving process.

• The process is trying to send the SIGCONT signal to a process in the same session.

• The calling process has appropriate privileges.

Processes can send signals to themselves.

Use on Guardian Objects

The kill() function cannot send signals to Guardian processes.

Use From the Guardian Environment

If called from a Guardian process, the actions of this function are undeﬁned and errno is set to

[ENOTOSS].

Specifying the Target Process

The kill() function allows the calling process to send a signal to a speciﬁc group of processes.

The pid parameter speciﬁes the group according to the following rules:

• If the pid parameter is greater than 0 (zero), the signal speciﬁed by the signal parameter

is sent to the process that has an OSS process ID (PID) equal to the value of the pid

parameter.

• If the pid parameter is equal to 0 (zero), the signal speciﬁed by the signal parameter is

sent to all of the processes whose process group ID is equal to the process group ID of

the sender and for which the process has permission to send the signal.

• If the pid parameter is negative but not equal to -1, the signal speciﬁed by the signal

parameter is sent to all of the processes whose process group ID is equal to the absolute

value of the pid parameter and for which the process has permission to send the signal.

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