From KevinWiki

Linux Commands (Practical Use)

Kill Processes Found by ps

e.g.) Killing flash

• Get the running flash processes

$ ps aux | grep flash 

username    5488  3.4  0.7 732108 114580 ?       Sl   04:28   0:13 /path/to/app --type=plugin --plugin-path=/usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
username    5591  1.3  0.2 410888 33128 ?        Sl   04:35   0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
username    5602  0.0  0.0  14812   912 pts/3    S+   04:35   0:00 grep --color=auto flash

• Exclude the process to grep flash

$ ps aux | grep flash | grep -v grep 

username    5488  3.4  0.7 732108 114580 ?       Sl   04:28   0:13 /path/to/app --type=plugin --plugin-path=/usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
username    5591  1.3  0.2 410888 33128 ?        Sl   04:35   0:00 /usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

• Get only the process IDs

$ ps aux | grep flash | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2; }' 

5488
5591

• Use the process IDs to kill the processes

$ kill -9 `ps aux | grep flash | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2; }'`