Killing processes

[DZH]

Hi guys!

Given a process ID (PID), how do I get the child processes whose parent process is PID? The intent is to programmatically kill a process and all its child processes. If a child process is itself a parent of another process, then the "second generation" child processes should be killed as well. I would like to do this on Solaris using C and any of the scripting langs (SH, AWK, or PERL).

Thanks.

 

[JasonDeckard]

I'm not familiar with a standard library function that returns a list of child process IDs. However, since you know the PID you want to kill, you could call getppid() on each possibly valid PID and kill anything that has a parent PID that matches your target.

Perhaps someone else has a more efficient method. I'd like to hear it

 

[DZH]

getppid() returns the parent process ID of the calling process, therefore it would not useful in extracting all the required PIDs.

 

[JasonDeckard]

My apologies: the getppid() function takes no arguments, so it cannot be used to find the parent of another process.

I have some pstat functions on my HP/UX box that do what you want, but I believe they are proprietary. I'm not sure what the Solaris equivalent is.

Sorry for the confusion

 

[JasonDeckard]

I suspect this only compiles on HP/UX, but I'm posting it in case it will help you track down a Solaris solution.

#include <errno.h>
#include <limits.h>     /* For PID_MAX */
#include <sys/param.h>
#include <sys/pstat.h>
#include <pwd.h>
#include <stdio.h>

extern int errno;

int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
  int i, rVal, ppid;
  struct pst_status pst;
  struct passwd *pw;


  /* Validate command line */

  if ( argc < 2 )
  {
    puts( &quot;Usage: kidlist <pid>&quot; );
    return EINVAL;
  }

  ppid = atoi( argv[1] );


  /* Loop through the entire valid PID range and
   * list processes that have parent PIDs that
   * match our provided PID.
   */

  for ( i = 0; i < PID_MAX; i++ )
  {
    rVal = pstat_getproc( &pst, sizeof(pst), 0, i );

    if ( rVal == -1 )
    {
      if ( errno != ESRCH )  /* &quot;PID not found&quot; is okay to ignore */
      {
        perror( &quot;pstat_getproc()&quot; );
        return errno;
      }
    }

    else if ( pst.pst_ppid == ppid )  /* Found a child */
    {
      /* Obtain the name of the process owner */
      pw = getpwuid( pst.pst_uid );

      if ( pw == NULL )
        printf( &quot;(??????) %5d %s\n&quot;, pst.pst_pid, pst.pst_cmd );
      else
        printf( &quot;%-8s %5d %s\n&quot;, pw->pw_name, pst.pst_pid, pst.pst_cmd );
    }
  }

  return 0;
}

 

[Salem]

An alternative would be to parse the output of say 'ps -el' (flags may vary) which lists the PID and PPID of each process.
From that, you can build the ancestor relationships of all the processes.

 

[AllenV]

I think this is a double post that has been solved.

thread205-571800