Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!dover!digital!digital.sps.mot.com!chen
From: chen@digital.sps.mot.com (Jinfu Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: /etc/killall, what is it?
Keywords: /etc/killall, features.
Message-ID: <4bd952fb.12c9a@digital.sps.mot.com>
Date: 27 Jul 90 23:05:52 GMT
References: <551@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl>
Sender: news@digital.sps.mot.com
Organization: Motorola, Inc. SPS, Mesa, AZ
Lines: 38

In article <551@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl> wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl writes:
>YAQ(yet another question):
>    Intro:
>	An user on our system has discovered the /etc/killall program.

Straight from sys5.3 man page:

=======================================

     killall - kill all active processes

SYNOPSIS
     /etc/killall [ signal ]

DESCRIPTION
     killall uses /etc/shutdown to kill all active processes not directly
     related to the shutdown procedure.

     killall terminates all processes with open files so that the mounted file
     systems are freed and can be unmounted.

     killall sends signal (see kill[1]) to all processes that are not part of
     the above group of exclusions.  If you do not specify signal, the default
     signal - 9 - is used.

FILES
     /etc/shutdown

SEE ALSO
     shutdown(1M), kill(1), ps(1)
     signal(2)

NOTE
     Only a super-user can run killall.
            ^^^^^^^^^^

However, I could run this program as a regular user. The default permission
is 555 in our system. Wonder why...