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Description: kill: Correctly parse negative pids
kill would only correctly parse single digit negative pids because
it was using the optopt which is a single character, it now uses the
entire argument.
Origin: upstream, https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps/-/commit/bfbaf43acade8c9de38737e87f4fc535991c8359
Applied-Upstream: 4.0.5
Reviewed-by: Craig Small <csmall@debian.org>
Last-Update: 2025-04-13
---
This patch header follows DEP-3: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep3/
--- a/src/kill.c
+++ b/src/kill.c
@@ -138,7 +138,8 @@
} else {
/* Special case for signal digit negative
* PIDs */
- pid = (long)('0' - optopt);
+ pid = strtol_or_err(argv[optind], _("failed to parse argument"));
+
if (!execute_kill((pid_t) pid, signo, use_sigqueue, sigval))
exitvalue = EXIT_FAILURE;
exit(exitvalue);
--- a/man/kill.1
+++ b/man/kill.1
@@ -72,6 +72,12 @@
Your shell (command line interpreter) may have a built-in kill
command. You may need to run the command described here as /bin/kill
to solve the conflict.
+.PP
+If you use negative PID values, you will need to specify a signal as well so that
+.B kill
+knows if the option is for the PID or the signal number. For example, issuing
+the command with the single option \fB\-9\fR it is not clear if you
+mean signal 9 (SIGKILL) or process group 9.
.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
.B kill \-9 \-1
@@ -85,6 +91,10 @@
.TP
.B kill 123 543 2341 3453
Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.
+.TP
+.B kill -SIGTERM -123
+Send the signal SIGTERM to process group 123. The signal name or number is
+required if specifying process groups with a negative PID.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR kill (2),
.BR killall (1),
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