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killall -HUP --whatis?

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by rouse 1 view

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Please explain the -HUP in the following:
/sbin/killall -HUP httpd
/usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd

My man page says only: Signals can be specified either by name (e.g. -HUP) or by number (e.g. -1).

If you issue a "killall httpd", is a -HUP implied?

Where I'm going with this is I'm trying to add a logrotation in logrotate.d, and I see these 'killall'. I'd think that this would shut down the web server & log daemon.

3 replies

by feizhou

killall without any signals defined will by default send signal number 15 (TERM) to the process. That will shut the process down. (it should anyway)

killall -HUP will send the SIGHUP signal or signal number 1. This will cause the process to restart or whatever that program will do when it receives the SIGHUP signal. Most programs use it to restart or reread configuration files.

Don't worry, killall -HUP will not shutdown apache or the log daemon.

A killall httpd does not imply -HUP. Itimplies -TERM to httpd which should then shutdown.

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