Hey everyone...

This might be a dumb question, but why is it that when I try and use 'kill' through the console it does'nt do anything. Is my syntax wrong??

Say I want to end a process with a pid of 4500... I type:
kill 4500

Simple enough, does'nt report any errors. But the process is still seen as active when I type up 'ps -e'. I need to get this working because every now and then, an app I close remains active and uses up CPU for nothing...

Any suggestions?

if using kill, i've always used:

kill -9 pid_number

where pid_number is, well, a number.

if you know the name of the process you can do:

killall process_name

I use # ps ax to get a complete list of processes and their respective PID's.. # kill '####' works fine for me. Are you trying to kill a process ran by root as normal user?

Whoa! Thanks for the quick replies...

While your suggestions were good, nothing seems to work. :P

Something's screwy! BTW, I'm trying to kill soffice.bin right now, which is sucking up 90% of my CPU. I refuse to logout until I figure this out.

EDIT:
It was run by a normal user, but I tried killing it as superuser as well.

can you post the output of 'ps -el'? maybe it could be something peripheral that OO is using that's doing the actual sucking.

$ ps -el
F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD
4 S 0 1 0 0 68 0 - 339 select ? 00:00:04 init
1 S 0 2 1 0 69 0 - 0 contex ? 00:00:00 kevent
1 S 0 3 1 0 69 0 - 0 apm_ma ? 00:00:00 kapmd
1 S 0 4 1 0 79 19 - 0 ksofti ? 00:00:00 ksofti
1 S 0 5 1 0 69 0 - 0 kswapd ? 00:00:02 kswapd
1 S 0 6 1 0 69 0 - 0 bdflus ? 00:00:00 bdflus
1 S 0 7 1 0 69 0 - 0 kupdat ? 00:00:00 kupdat
1 S 0 8 1 0 59 -20 - 0 md_thr ? 00:00:00 mdreco
1 S 0 12 1 0 69 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 kjourn
5 S 0 107 1 0 69 0 - 569 devfsd ? 00:00:00 devfsd
1 S 0 201 1 0 69 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 khubd
1 S 0 461 1 0 69 0 - 0 down_i ? 00:00:00 usb-st
1 S 0 462 1 0 69 0 - 0 down_i ? 00:00:00 scsi_e
1 S 0 493 1 0 69 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 msp341
1 S 0 547 1 0 69 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 kjourn
1 S 0 571 1 0 69 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 kjourn
1 S 0 716 1 0 69 0 - 0 down_i ? 00:00:00 knodem
5 S 0 1046 1 0 68 0 - 338 nanosl ? 00:00:00 ifplug
1 S 0 1119 1 0 69 0 - 488 select ? 00:00:00 dhclie
5 S 70 1168 1 0 69 0 - 376 poll ? 00:00:00 portma
1 S 0 1184 1 0 69 0 - 363 select ? 00:00:01 syslog
5 S 0 1192 1 0 69 0 - 515 syslog ? 00:00:00 klogd
5 S 71 1298 1 0 69 0 - 1268 select ? 00:00:00 xfs
5 S 0 1340 1 0 68 0 - 341 select ? 00:00:00 apmd
5 S 2 1359 1 0 69 0 - 381 select ? 00:00:00 tmdns
5 S 0 1390 1 0 69 0 - 496 select ? 00:00:00 xinetd
1 S 0 1491 1 0 68 0 - 353 nanosl ? 00:00:00 crond
1 S 0 1531 1 0 69 0 - 331 pause ? 00:00:00 vmnet-
5 S 0 1551 1 0 69 0 - 388 poll ? 00:00:05 vmnet-
1 S 0 1960 1 0 68 0 - 2120 select ? 00:00:00 minise
4 S 0 1980 1 0 69 0 - 591 wait4 ? 00:00:00 login
4 S 0 1981 1 0 69 0 - 333 read_c vc/2 00:00:00 minget
4 S 0 1982 1 0 69 0 - 333 read_c vc/3 00:00:00 minget
4 S 0 1983 1 0 69 0 - 333 read_c vc/4 00:00:00 minget
4 S 0 1984 1 0 69 0 - 333 read_c vc/5 00:00:00 minget
4 S 0 1985 1 0 69 0 - 333 read_c vc/6 00:00:00 minget
1 S 0 2026 1 0 69 0 - 330 pause ? 00:00:00 vmnet-
1 S 0 2042 1 0 69 0 - 393 select ? 00:00:00 vmnet-
4 S 501 2113 1980 0 69 0 - 654 wait4 vc/1 00:00:00 bash
0 S 501 2149 2113 0 69 0 - 602 wait4 vc/1 00:00:00 startx
0 S 501 2160 2149 0 69 0 - 580 wait4 vc/1 00:00:00 xinit
4 S 0 2161 2160 1 69 0 - 14420 select ? 00:07:31 X
0 S 501 2194 2160 0 69 0 - 604 wait4 vc/1 00:00:00 startk
1 S 501 2258 1 0 68 0 - 5159 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 2261 1 0 69 0 - 5197 select ? 00:00:02 kdeini
1 S 501 2264 1 0 69 0 - 5644 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 2266 1 0 69 0 - 42982 select ? 00:00:03 kdeini
4 S 501 2267 1390 0 69 0 - 853 select ? 00:00:01 fam
1 S 501 2283 1 0 69 0 - 43799 select ? 00:00:01 kdeini
0 S 501 2284 2194 0 69 0 - 335 nanosl vc/1 00:00:00 kwrapp
1 S 501 2286 1 0 69 0 - 42179 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 2287 2258 0 69 0 - 42525 select ? 00:00:11 kdeini
1 S 501 2289 1 0 69 0 - 44641 select ? 00:00:14 kdeini
1 S 501 2293 1 0 69 0 - 44312 select ? 00:00:19 kdeini
0 S 501 2296 2258 0 69 0 - 3482 poll ? 00:00:06 gkrell
1 S 501 2424 1 0 69 0 - 45083 select ? 00:00:10 kopete
1 S 501 2429 1 0 69 0 - 42266 select ? 00:00:00 kweath
1 S 501 2435 1 0 69 0 - 42412 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 2438 1 0 69 0 - 42431 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 2440 1 0 69 0 - 42310 select ? 00:00:00 korgac
1 S 501 2442 1 0 69 0 - 42290 select ? 00:00:00 kalarm
1 S 501 2488 1 0 69 0 - 42540 select ? 00:00:01 kdeini
1 S 501 2586 1 0 69 0 - 3716 select ? 00:00:00 kdesud
0 S 501 2886 2289 0 69 0 - 42251 select ? 00:00:00 kdeskt
0 S 501 3024 1 0 68 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:00 kdesu
5 S 0 4143 1 0 69 0 - 1987 select ? 00:00:00 smbd3
5 S 0 4153 1 0 69 0 - 1514 select ? 00:00:00 nmbd3
0 S 501 4239 2258 0 68 0 - 0 ? ? 00:00:01 kdesu
1 S 501 4295 2258 0 69 0 - 5265 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 R 501 4501 1 41 76 0 - 0 - ? 01:01:37 soffic
1 S 501 4690 2258 0 70 0 - 42799 select ? 00:00:02 kdeini
0 S 501 4691 4690 0 72 0 - 655 wait4 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
1 S 501 4820 2258 1 69 0 - 45310 select ? 00:00:11 kdeini
1 S 501 4847 2258 0 69 0 - 5305 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4850 2258 0 69 0 - 5296 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4853 2258 0 69 0 - 5296 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4854 2258 0 69 0 - 5294 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4859 2258 0 69 0 - 5305 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4862 2258 0 69 0 - 5296 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4863 2258 0 68 0 - 5295 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
1 S 501 4881 2258 0 69 0 - 5294 select ? 00:00:00 kdeini
0 R 501 4892 4691 0 72 0 - 895 - pts/1 00:00:00 ps

soffic is under pid 4501...

well i didn't see soffice.bin anywhere in there. is "kjourn" "kjournald"? i have a inkling, that it's "kjourn" sucking up your processing power. i never could figure that one out, but i think it's runs the database updater for slocate in kde.

1 R 501 4501 1 44 79 0 - 0 - ? 01:09:49 soffice.bin

Above I missed the "e.bin" on my copy paste for some reason...
What about these 'kjourn' and 'kjournald' processes, are these safe to kill so I can see for sure?

*double post*

actually nevermind on the kjournald thing. i've got it running on my comp right now. i don't know what it does, but it's using 0 resources. so that isn't your problem. it looks like you use kde. run this command:

ksysguard --showprocesses

it's like the windows task manager. there should be resource percentages there and the owner of the processes.

edit: actually try what was suggested earlier.

1. su -
2. killall soffice.bin

I'm starting to think I should just forget about this and assume soffice.bin went fubar on me. Nor su -> killall soffice.bin or killing it directly with ksysguard work.

It;'s only the second time in a couple of months something like this happens. So it's no big deal...

Just for fun I tried running a whole bunch of misc. things and killing them. That works like a charm.

Oh well, I appreciate your help... and if you think of anything else post away. But my feelings are that this isin't gonna get fixed... Until I logout of course.

all i have to say is that that's odd that you couldn't kill it as root. sorry, nothing worked for you though....