Bash kill shell script running in background

Kill a running script using the parent process id.

$ cat myscript.sh 
while :; do
    date
    sleep 1
done
$ bash myscript.sh
Sun Dec 10 00:00:00 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:01 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:02 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:03 PST 2017
...

Find the parent process id in the 3rd column. It contains the value for the PPID (parent process id).

$ ps lux | head -1
UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI     VSZ    RSS WCHAN STAT TT     TIME COMMAND         USER %CPU %MEM STARTED
$ ps lux | grep sleep
501 16357 16313 0 31 0 4267768 1000 -     S+ s002    0:00.01 sleep 1         user 0.1 0.0 00:00AM
501 16359 15647 0 31 0 4259052    288 -     R+ s001    0:00.00 grep sleep     user 0.0 0.0 00:00AM

Use the kill command on the PPID and it will stop the child process. Ignore the line containing the process ids for the grep command.

$ kill 16313

The child process is terminated.

...
Sun Dec 10 00:00:04 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:05 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:06 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:07 PST 2017
Sun Dec 10 00:00:08 PST 2017
Terminated: 15

If the process is not terminated, you might try -9 or sudo.

$ kill -9 $ppid
$ sudo kill $ppid
$ sudo kill -9 $ppid

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