kill a program

[arinlares]

I used killall. But then I read on some versions of Linux this kills ALL programs the user can kill. Since then I only use pkill since that only kills the program which name you give it.
I'm afraid if I ever change to another distro, I'll accidentally may use killall if I'm used to it.

I'm on Windows right now, but the Ubuntu manpage site has the page for killall. I've been using it under Arch, Debian distros, and Slackware for three years, and no system-nuking has occured (yet). It kills all processes spawned by the command named (killall PROGRAM), which I think is why it's "killall".

[vinnywright]

just dont let your zombie's fork while fork , they will multiply exponentially and fill your system .........

VINNY

[Snowhog]

If it's already a hung program, and the need still exists to 'kill' it, doesn't that mean that it has 'returned to life' -- become a zombie?

[SteveRiley]

what is the easiest way to kill a "hung" program

Once the program is already hung, just kick out the platform and let it dangle. Sometimes other programs might come and watch, even.

[james147]

I did know of htop I just never got my hands dirty with it yet ,it dident seem to work like I thought it should......hummm maby some reading up on it's operation is in order

I find it works just like top, but is easier to interact with (it even gives you some common keys you can press at the bottom of the screen) and gives a much nicer presentation of the data (colours and graphs ).

[Goeroeboeroe]

I used killall. But then I read on some versions of Linux this kills ALL programs the user can kill. Since then I only use pkill since that only kills the program which name you give it.
I'm afraid if I ever change to another distro, I'll accidentally may use killall if I'm used to it.

[arinlares]

I just pkill $BADPROGRAM or killall $BADPROGRAM. I don't know if it'll work with KDE's launcher (new here, learned a few things in this thread).

[vinnywright]

In this case you can hit Ctrl+ESC to bring up the System Activity monitor which you can select a process to kill similar to top.

this one I was aware of , but it's good for the thread

There is also the krunner plugin terminal applications which lets you hit Alt+F2 and type "kill applicationname" to kill that application (it will list them if there are more then one as well and can be configured to sort them by cpu usage). It also lets you send either SIGTERM or SIGKILL to the process (either ask it to terminate nicely (better) or just stop it dead (only if it does not want to exit)).

this one I was not aware of ,,,, nice one

Note: there is a better version of top called htop, it adds colours and some graphs at the top and is easier to configure/use. If you use top allot I would recommend trying it.

I did know of htop I just never got my hands dirty with it yet ,it dident seem to work like I thought it should......hummm maby some reading up on it's operation is in order

VINNY

[notabug]

I'm really enjoying this thread. I know these tips are minor compared to some other things, but still very helpful and easy to grasp concepts, too. Thanks everyone.

[james147]

yes that is a cool one , and has been around sence at least the KDE-3 series that I know of.

however it wont help you on a runaway process.
for instance the other day Nepomuk puked on me at start up (never happened before or sense) .
in this case sense thare was no GUI or window to click the scull and cross bones on I puled up top (actually I puled up top to see what was slowing down the system) and upon seeing Nepomuk eating up 99/100% CPU cycles I pressed the K key then entered the PID of the process and hit enter top will ask if you want to kill the process with signal 15 (or maby something else) hit enter agin and it kills it

VINNY

In this case you can hit Ctrl+ESC to bring up the System Activity monitor which you can select a process to kill similar to top.

There is also the krunner plugin terminal applications which lets you hit Alt+F2 and type "kill applicationname" to kill that application (it will list them if there are more then one as well and can be configured to sort them by cpu usage). It also lets you send either SIGTERM or SIGKILL to the process (either ask it to terminate nicely (better) or just stop it dead (only if it does not want to exit)).

Note: there is a better version of top called htop, it adds colours and some graphs at the top and is easier to configure/use. If you use top allot I would recommend trying it.

[sealbhach]

Good one! I did not know about the skull thing.

[whatthefunk]

I didnt know about that one! Thanks.

[vinnywright]

yes that is a cool one , and has been around sence at least the KDE-3 series that I know of.

however it wont help you on a runaway process.
for instance the other day Nepomuk puked on me at start up (never happened before or sense) .
in this case sense thare was no GUI or window to click the scull and cross bones on I puled up top (actually I puled up top to see what was slowing down the system) and upon seeing Nepomuk eating up 99/100% CPU cycles I pressed the K key then entered the PID of the process and hit enter top will ask if you want to kill the process with signal 15 (or maby something else) hit enter agin and it kills it

VINNY

[notabug]

Borrowing a phrase from an esteemed member.....trey cool. This is much easier than using system monitor to kill an unruly application. Thank you much.

[Robtygart]

Ctrl+Alt+Esc

This gives a skull cursor. Position it on the application window and click. Program is killed.

Cool command!

Is there any place to see more commands like theses.