While investigating resource usage on a web server, you find several long-named processes owned by the user "report". Two of them are named "gen_report_longjob" and "gen_report_listener". Because both names share the first 15 characters, a previous administrator inadvertently terminated both services by running:
sudo killall gen_report_longjob
You want to gracefully stop only the "gen_report_longjob" processes that belong to the user "report" and avoid touching "gen_report_listener" or any root-owned processes. Which command accomplishes this goal?
The -e (or --exact) option forces killall to require an exact match of the full command name when that name is longer than 15 characters, preventing the partial-name match that killed processes beginning with the same first 15 characters. Adding -u report further restricts the action to processes owned by the specified user. Together, killall -e -u report gen_report_longjob sends the default SIGTERM signal only to the intended report-owned instances of gen_report_longjob.
The other choices do not meet both requirements:
-u report -s SIGKILL still matches on only the first 15 characters, so gen_report_listener would also be killed.
-I makes the match case-insensitive but does not prevent the 15-character truncation or filter by user.
Using -e without the -u modifier would still terminate root-owned instances of the same command.
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What does the -e option do in the killall command?
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Why is the -u option important in the killall command?
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What signal does killall send by default, and how does it differ from SIGKILL?
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