What option is used with kill to cause the server to reread its config file.

If you want to kill the server, Control + C usually helps. A kill command is not the perfect solution.

Anyway, ps aux will give you the process id running in the system.

Pick the pid of your choice and issue a kill -9 pid

is there a way to find the pid # and issue the kill with one command line?

strange ?'s i know, this is for a class.

This had been answered many times. Please use the SEARCH facility.

Anyway you could use,

just a pointer, you need to refine that

keep getting
arg must be a process of job id

Can you please post, what is the exact command that you had run and the error message you get?

I would say using kill -9 pid is not the better choice in most of the situations,
where the process intended to kill is poorly deprived of doing any sort of cleanup operations. Most of the programs would have implemented ( if not, that cannot be helped ) or rather registered signal handlers and that signals should only be delivered for a safe and clean kill possibly. SIGTERM should have been registered in most of the cases and it would be better to go with that instead of the merciless kill.