Pkill by name hits whoever fired

I killed a test server with pkill -f pointed at the process name. The command died before it finished: the pattern matched the very command line running it, the shell took the hit too, and the result was an exit -15 instead of output. On top of that, it took down every process with that name — including ones that were not mine and had been running for hours. The lesson fits in one line: killing by name is shooting inside the house with the lights off. pkill matches text, not intent. Aim at the port owner's identifier and check the list before you pull the trigger.