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Asked: 2026-05-22T23:55:59+00:00

For testing purpose I am running several (few 100s ) expect scripts. All are

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For testing purpose I am running several (few 100s) expect scripts. All are spawned from the same parent (sometimes its pid is 1). Is there any way to kill them at one stretch without changing their source code and without killing the parent process itself ? Something like:

[root@devx-csb4 expect_scripts] kill -9 <child of pid=...>

All expect script are just the same but ran in a loop; see the following ps -ef | grep milind

root     19879     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13265 55650
root     19889     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13266 55660
root     19899     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13267 55670
root     19930     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13268 55680
root     19940     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13269 55690
root     19973     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13270 55700
root     19983     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13271 55710
root     19993     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13272 55720
root     20024     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13273 55730
root     20034     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13274 55740
root     20067     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13275 55750
root     20104     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13276 55760
root     20114     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13277 55770
root     20145     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13278 55780
root     20155     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13279 55790
root     20188     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13280 55800
root     20198     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13281 55810
root     20208     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13282 55820
root     20239     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13283 55830
root     20249     1  0 20:27 pts/9    00:00:00 /usr/bin/expect /root/pjproject-1.0.3/pjsip-apps/bin/expect_scripts/milind.exp 13284 55840
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    1. Give them all a name with a common substring and use pkill(1)

    2. Use ps, get the parent process ID, and kill all the PIDs attached to the parent process. This is undesirable when the parent process is 1. Notice that your notion of using kill -9 pid= suffers from the same problem — all the system daemon processes are children of PID 1.

    3. Keep a list of the expect script names; run ps and for each name in your list, find the PID; kill it.

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