Command killall -9 gdbused on Linux to forcefully terminate all processes matching a given name. We can break down the various parts of the command one by one:
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killall : This is a command used to kill the process matching the specified name. It matches and kills processes not based on process ID, but on process name.
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-9 : This is the type of signal sent to the process. In Linux, each signal has an associated number. The signal represented by the number "9" is that
SIGKILLthis is a forced termination signal that cannot be caught, blocked, or ignored by the process. When you send a SIGKILL signal to a process, the operating system terminates it immediately, without the process having a chance to perform any cleanup or shutdown operations. -
gdb : This is the name of the process you want to terminate. In this case, you are trying to kill all processes named "gdb".
gdbIs the GNU debugger, used for debugging programs.
So the command killall -9 gdbmeans: "Force terminate all processes named 'gdb' without giving them any chance to clean up or shut down".
Care should be taken when using the killall -9or kill -9command as this is a very strong way to kill a process. Where possible, try to use other signals (e.g. SIGTERM, the default signals) to gracefully shut down the process first, and only use them when necessary SIGKILL.