Why does the connection break when I kill a process on remote host?

Why does the connection break when I kill a process on remote host?

• I login to the remote host (debian) by ssh and execute a command like this ssh user@remote_host "ps -ef | grep process_name | grep -v grep | awk {'print $2'} | xargs kill -9' then the connection breaks. I ping the remote host and can't receive any response, like the network isn't connected. But when I restart the remote host (power off and power on), everything is ok. I promise that the process killed is only the program written by me and it's father process is "init" process (if the process run in fg and is killed that everything is ok). Is there any one who knows why it happened?

• Answer:

  ps -ef | grep process_name | grep -v grep gives not only the pid of what you want to kill, but also other information such as the uid, command of the process which may kill something unexpectly. More unfortunately, its ppid (parent pid, for you is 1) is also showed, then you know what will happen. You may try ssh user@remote_host "pkill process_name" or ssh user@remote_host "ps -eo pid,cmd | grep process_name | grep -v grep | cut -d' ' -f2 | xargs kill -9" Or you can first get its output: ssh user@remote_host "ps -ef | grep process_name | grep -v grep" and then filter the pid yourself.