Technical Tip: Find and restart/kill a process on a FortiGate by the process ID (PID) via pidof

elfaran_FTNT · ‎04-05-2022

Description

This article describes how to restart processes by killing the process ID.

Some processes cannot be restarted via diag test app 99.

Scope

All FortiOS versions since 6.2.

Solution

To find the process ID just enter the following command (on a global level):

diag sys process pidof <PPROCESS_NAME>

So, if the process ID is sought of hasync, the command would be:

diag sys process pidof hasync

There can be several pids in the output.

So the following step would need to be repeated for every PID:

diag sys kill 11 <pid>

It is possible as well kill all processes at once via this command:

fnsysctl killall <PPROCESS_NAME>

Note.

'fnsysctl killall' is not working for every process (e.g. hasync).

In the case of 'fnsysctl killall' process crashlog ('diagnose debug crashlog read') is not generated.

To check, if the command was working correctly, it is possible again to run 'diag sys process pidof <PPROCESS_NAME>' and compare the PIDs.

When everything is correct, the PIDs will have changed.

In case a single instance of the process is killed, the log entry will be generated.