Here's a job control conundrum for you.

[Ben Scott]

On 4/10/07, Steven W. Orr <steveo at syslang.net> wrote:
> At the end of the day I don't want to cleanly exit from alpine (for
> reasons that are not important).  Instead I want to kill it.

  ...  Okay.  ~shrug~  I won't ask why.  But I will ask this: What do
you mean by "kill"?

  You give the example of "kill -1", which sends signal 1.  I believe
signal 1 is SIGHUP on most systems.  I don't know about Alpine, but
Pine (original flavor) would catch SIGHUP and do a clean shutdown.  If
by "kill" you mean "stop it dead in it's tracks, instantly, with no
further action possible", you probably want SIGKILL, which is usually
signal 9.

  Also, simply closing your SSH session (or xterm window, modem, etc.)
will also usually result in SIGHUP, so I'm not sure what sending it
manually accomplishes in the first place.

> If I say killall -1 alpine there's no effect.
> If I say kill -1 %1 it does what I want.

  As Michael ODonnell said, "kill" is usually a shell builtin, which
will override the /bin/kill external program.

  Assuming you're using the same "killall" program I am, there are
several options that may help shed some light on the situation.  For
example, try this:

	killall --signal HUP --verbose alpine

  I used the long form for clarity; shorter forms also work.  For more
ideas, try "killall --help".

-- Ben