Linux Multi-Process Killing

Introduction

In the glittering court of the Ming Dynasty, renowned for its architectural splendour and cultural prosperity, lived a renowned court painter, renowned for capturing the splendour and intricacies of court life on his canvases. Amidst the ornate palace gardens and pavilions, our painter faces an unexpected challenge. He must learn the ways of the 'Linux Garden', a metaphor for his many ongoing painting processes, and master the skill of carefully pruning overgrown branches, symbolised here as the termination of multiple processes using 'killall'.

Our goal in this scenario is to simulate the painter's need for order in the Linux garden by teaching him how to efficiently and effectively manage multiple processes using the killall command. The lab will progress in such a way that the participant will feel as if they are the court painter, learning new skills to maintain the splendour of their digital garden in the same way they would manage their real one.

Join us in this lab to discover the art of process management. Let's hone your Linux skills and keep your system's processes as meticulously tended as a Ming Dynasty imperial garden.

Skills Graph

Simulating the Painting Processes

In this step, you will create several background processes that simulate the court painter’s numerous ongoing painting tasks. Each process will be named after a famous Ming-era painting style or technique, allowing us to seamlessly manage them later with the killall command.

First, navigate to your project directory:

cd ~/project

Now, let's create a simple shell script named painting_process_simulator.sh in the ~/project directory, which will simulate a painting process:

echo '#!/bin/bash' > painting_process_simulator.sh
echo 'while true; do echo "Simulating painting process"; sleep 5; done' >> painting_process_simulator.sh
chmod +x painting_process_simulator.sh

Next, run several instances of this script in the background:

./painting_process_simulator.sh &
./painting_process_simulator.sh &
./painting_process_simulator.sh &

Each of these commands will initiate a background process that will continuously output a message every 5 seconds.

Pruning with Killall

After creating and observing your painting processes run, it’s time to learn how to stop them efficiently using the killall command, which will prune all instances of our simulated painting processes in one fell swoop.

In this step, first list all your running processes to confirm the presence of the painting simulants:

ps

To halt all painting simulation processes at once, use the killall command:

killall -9 painting_process_simulator.sh

This will forcefully stop all processes named painting_process_simulator.sh. The -9 option is the signal number for SIGKILL, which is a sure way to stop a process.

Check to see if the processes have been terminated:

ps

Summary

In this lab, you embodied the attention to detail of a Ming Dynasty court painter and applied the same meticulousness to managing Linux processes. By simulating painting tasks with a script and then managing them with the killall command, you've learnt how to monitor and terminate multiple processes efficiently.

Understanding how to control processes in Linux is a fundamental skill, just as a painter must understand his brush. Mastering these commands will lead to better resource management and system control. We thank you for navigating the Linux garden with us, and hope that you will continue to use the grace and precision of a true craftsman in your Linux endeavours.