Problem:
If you are using a centos 7 minimal installation, and trying to kill process by name using the command ‘killall’, you are most likely going to see the error:
# killall -9 php
killall: command not found
The error appears because CentOS 7 encourages you to use pkill instead of killall to kill process by name. pkill has versatile application, although, it can be used to kill process by name same as killall.
How to kill process by name in Centos 7
You can use pkill. pkill is a simple command. It’s syntax is as following:
# pkill processname
For example, if you want to kill all the php process, run:
# pkill php
Note: It will kill all the processes that match php. To list the process that pkill going to kill, you can use pgrep as following:
# pgrep -l php
How to use killall in Centos 7
If you do not want to use pkill, and keep using killall commands in centos 7, this is also possible. killall is a part of psmisc yum package. All you have to do, is to install psmisc in your system using yum
# yum install psmisc
# killall -9 php