Kill -9 -1

mikeshn · 09-13-2002, 05:29 PM

Hello

I always use the command to kill the process
kill -9 pid(process ID) .

Today on my Red Hat 7.3 box accidently typed
kill -9 -1 .. The monitor start blinking and everything freezed.

My questions is : What is the purpose of these commands:

kill -9 -1
kill -9

Thanks

stickman · 09-13-2002, 09:23 PM

kill basically sends different signal to the appropriate process. The PID of -1 represents any process whose PID is greater than 1. Basically "kill -9 -1" terminates every process except for init, which would explain the sudden freeze of your system.