killbyname.sh

#!/bin/bash
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE:  killbyname.sh
# 
#         USAGE:  ./killbyname.sh <process name>
# 
#   DESCRIPTION:  A utility to kill a process gracefully by its partial name, i.e. the name is 
#                 a substring of the full command that started this process. This is 
#                 useful when we don't know the exact name of the process, but the 
#                 application name (e.g. terminal, firefox, chromium).
#                 By gracefulness, we mean the signal used starts from TERM INT QUIT HUP to KILL
#       OPTIONS:  ---
#  REQUIREMENTS:  ---
#          BUGS:  ---
#         NOTES:  ---
#        AUTHOR:  Dexter H. Hu, hyhu@cs.hku.hk
#       COMPANY:  HKU CS
#       VERSION:  1.0
#       CREATED:  03/12/2010 05:24:02 PM HKT
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================


terminate(){
    # accepts PID as $1, defaults to current process
    signals=(TERM INT QUIT HUP KILL) 
    s=0
    signal_qty=${#signals[@]}

    while [[ $s < $signal_qty ]] 
    do
        signal=${signals[$s]}
        #echo $signal
        if [ $signal == "KILL" ]; then
            echo "Attempting to force kill it."
        else 
            echo "With signal $signal"
        fi
        
        sudo kill -$signal $1 2>&1 1>/dev/null
        sleep 2;
        
	result=$(ps $1 | wc -l)
        
	if [ $result == "1" ]; then # just found one line, i.e. the process with id is killed
           return 0
      	fi

        s=$s+1
    done
}


if [ "$1" == "" ]; then
	echo "Usage : ./killbyname.sh <process name>"
else
        # exclude any lines that contain "grep" or "killbyname" using "grep -v" command
        pno=$(ps axww | grep -v grep | grep -v killbyname | grep $1 | awk '{ print $1 }' | wc -l)
	if [ "$pno" == 0 ]; then
            	echo "Not found any process with partial name $1"
	else
           	echo "$pno processes found" 
        	for id in $(ps axww | grep -v grep | grep -v killbyname | grep $1 | awk '{ print $1 }'); do 
		echo "killing process with ID $id"
                result=$(ps $id | wc -l)
	        # echo "result = $result" 
        	if [ $result == "2" ]; then # the process with id is really there
           		terminate "$id"
        	fi
		done
        fi
fi