Can't kill firefox process on slack 12.0 (zombie)

Tim Johnson · 05-27-2010, 08:32 PM

Slack is 32bit.
Frequently, firefox becomes unresponsive. I can close the window,
but the process is not terminated. I am not able to restart firefox
without rebooting.

When this problems occurs the firefox processes are not terminated by
the 'kill' command. Example

Code:

tim@bart:/home/http/run/baker/cron$ ps aux | grep firefox
tim       3780  0.0  0.0   3356  1640 ?        S    15:59   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/firefox
tim       3792  0.0  0.0   3404  1696 ?        S    15:59   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/run-mozilla.sh /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/firefox-bin
tim       3796  0.3  3.2 316560 95712 ?        Sl   15:59   0:21 /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/firefox-bin
tim

and

Code:

kill 3780
kill 3792
kill 3796

Will have no effect.
This is a serious problem. Sheesh! It's as bad as being on windoze
when this happens.
What else can I do to kill these processes without rebooting.
Thanks
tim

T3slider · 05-27-2010, 08:36 PM

Well if you're that stuck try

Code:

$ kill -9 ####

revoemag · 05-27-2010, 08:36 PM

# kill -9 3780
# kill -9 3792
# kill -9 3796

or

# killall -9 firefox-bin

and if you use unix systems don't use killall with them>.<

MS3FGX · 05-27-2010, 08:36 PM

Yeah, the following should work:

Code:

killall -9 firefox-bin

speck · 05-27-2010, 08:37 PM

kill -9 all those PID's. Also, what add-ons are you running? There are a few (I had issues with Ghostery) that will cause Firefox not close correctly.

Tim Johnson · 05-27-2010, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by speck

kill -9 all those PID's. Also, what add-ons are you running? There are a few (I had issues with Ghostery) that will cause Firefox not close correctly.

Addons: Thanks for that tip
Thanks to all of you for the

Code:

kill -9

tip.
I will bookmark this thread (on both konquor and firefox)
As I write, I have scanned both 'man kill' and 'man killall' and haven't
found a reference to the -9 option.
Could anyone elaborate?
regards
tim

T3slider · 05-27-2010, 10:16 PM

`man kill` is a little cryptic but I believe it is the following line:

Code:

              -n     where  n is larger than 1.  All processes in process group n are signaled.  When an argument of the form `-n' is given, and it is meant to denote
                     a process group, either the signal must be specified first, or the argument must be preceded by a `--' option, otherwise it will be taken as  the
                     signal to send.

The different signals are listed in `man 7 signal`. The relevant one is below:

Code:

       SIGKILL       9       Term    Kill signal

koenigdavidmj · 05-27-2010, 11:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by revoemag

and if you use unix systems don't use killall with them>.<

To expand on this, you should use pkill instead of killall. On Linux they basically do the same thing, but on Solaris and some other systems killall run as root will ignore its argument and TERMINATE EVERY PROCESS ON YOUR SYSTEM!!!

knudfl · 05-28-2010, 07:03 AM

We had a similar LQ thread some months ago,
and it appeared, that 'killall -9 firefox-bin'
isn't always sufficient.

Sometimes 'killall -9 xulrunner' is the one to be used.
..