How to stop a running process in Linux? Print

There are several ways to stop a running process in Linux, depending on the situation and the specific process you want to stop. Here are a few common methods:

1. Using the kill command: You can use the kill command to send a signal to a process, telling it to terminate. To kill a process by its PID (process ID), you can use the following command:

2. Using killall command: You can use the killall command to kill all processes with a specified name. For example, to kill all processes named "process_name", you can use the following command:

3. Using pkill command: pkill is similar to killall, but it allows you to match processes by various criteria other than name, such as process owner, terminal, and more. For example, to kill all processes running as user "user_name", you can use the following command:

4. Using xkill command: You can use the xkill command to interactively select and kill a running X window. When you run xkill, your cursor will change to an "X" cursor, and you can click on any window to kill the associated process.

5. Using Ctrl+C: In some cases, you can stop a running process by pressing Ctrl+C on the keyboard. This sends an interrupt signal (SIGINT) to the process, which will cause it to terminate if it is designed to respond to this signal.

It's worth noting that some process might not be stopped by a simple kill, you may need to use kill -9 to forcefully stop the process. Also, it's important to be careful when using these commands, as terminating the wrong process can cause data loss or system instability.