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shellsshremotecommandpkill

Why does pkill kill my SSH session?

I want to do something like this:

program='java'
ssh bob@mycomputer "pkill -f $program; echo 'Done!'";

But, it seems like pkill is killing my ssh (I never see Done!). If I replace pkill with something else (say pwd), it works as expected.

Solution

  • Well seems really a good case here. The -f flag uses the full path of terminal and if its unable to get the process then it kills all the processes it could like pkill -f / which includes ssh. Refer here.

    If you try pkill without -f then it works. You can also check ssh verbose (ssh -v) to see what is happening in the background.

    Hope it helps.