kill <pid> does not do anything

moskito01 · 06-26-2004, 02:29 PM

Hi,

I tried to kill a process that did not respond by issuing
kill <pid>
but the process is still there...

I thought kill can kill every Process?
Or what am I doing wrong...

Frank

pgreenwood · 06-26-2004, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by moskito01
I thought kill can kill every Process?
Or what am I doing wrong...

Try ~$ man kill

for example

...For a process to have permission to send a signal to a process designated
by pid, the real or effective user ID of the receiving process must match
that of the sending process or the user must have appropriate privileges
(such as given by a set-user-ID program or the user is the superuser)....

hth

Pat

LinuxLala · 06-26-2004, 03:07 PM

That in simpler terms would mean that a user does not have permission to kill a process being run by root. Only root can do that.

bulliver · 06-26-2004, 04:38 PM

Also, some processes are so screwed up that they will ignore a soft kill command. Running 'kill <pid>' asks the process to wrap up loose ends and tidy up then die. If the process is hung it may not listen. Try a 'kill -9 <pid>' which will kill it outright with no cleanup. Sometimes it is the only way to kill a hung/misbehaving process.

moskito01 · 06-28-2004, 01:46 PM

Thank you all.
I already knew that sufficient permissions are required to kill a process.
But I did not know the -9 Stuff.
Using kill -9 <pid> worked perfectly.

Frank

IsaacKuo · 06-28-2004, 01:50 PM

In my experience, if a process is out of control enough to require killing, the only thing that's going to snuff it out is a kill -9 anyway.

coolnezz · 08-23-2009, 10:54 PM

Kill -9 <PID> did it for me! (hung up "apt-get update" process)
thanks.

manwithaplan · 08-23-2009, 11:10 PM

Just as a side note... a utility I use that I find useful is HTOP. It gives a visual look @ all running pid's etc...

i92guboj · 08-23-2009, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by manwithaplan

Just as a side note... a utility I use that I find useful is HTOP. It gives a visual look @ all running pid's etc...

Not only that, but it's quite handy to kill those mad processes. Press 'k', then select the signal you want to send to the process in the list that will appear to the left. In most cases, you will want either the default 15 (SIGTERM) or 9, as in the kill command above (SIGKILL).

coolnezz · 08-25-2009, 12:20 PM

just installed HTOP... nice!