On this particular big box:HP-UX frank B.11.00 U 9000/800 75635 unlimited-user license
Which as you see is HP-UX 11, killall is totally different that the linux killall. As we see from the manpage: NAME
killall - kill all active processes
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/killall [signal]
DESCRIPTION
killall is a procedure used by /usr/sbin/shutdown to kill all ac
+tive
processes not directly related to the shutdown procedure.
killall is chiefly used to terminate all processes with open fil
+es so
that the mounted file systems are no longer busy and can be unmo
+unted.
killall sends the specified signal to all user processes in the
system, with the following exceptions:
the init process;
all processes (including background processes) associated w
+ith
the terminal from which killall was invoked;
any ps -ef process, if owned by root;
any sed -e process, if owned by root;
any shutdown process;
any killall process;
any /sbin/rc process.
killall obtains its process information from ps, and therefore m
+ay not
be able to perfectly identify which processes to signal (see ps(
+1)).
If no signal is specified, a default of 9 (kill) is used.
killall is invoked automatically by shutdown The use of shutdown
+ is
recommended over using killall by itself (see shutdown(1M)).
FILES
/usr/sbin/shutdown
SEE ALSO
fuser(1M), kill(1), ps(1), shutdown(1M), signal(5).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
killall: SVID2, SVID3
Hewlett-Packard Company - 1 - HP-UX Release 11.00: Octobe
+r 1997
So, what it does is basically destroys all stubborn running processes still left during a system shutdown. Certainly not the same thing as a Linux killall, which really is just (as far as I can tell) a fancy signal sending multiplexer.
On a marginally related note, be careful and stingy with your kill -9 (and killall's as well)... lest you find yourself recepient of merlyn's Useless use of kill award :) | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] [d/l] [select] |