-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Dec 26, 2002 at 08:16:09PM -0800, anthony baldwin wrote: > I have run "man kill" and it is not in any decipherable language resembling > english. Sure it is... you just need to know a little about Unix signals and processes. A pid as a Process ID. You can find out the pid of running processes using the ps command. For example, the following command will show you information about all processes you are currently running: $ ps ux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND ddm 26736 0.1 1.3 7716 2660 pts/2 S 23:25 0:00 vim +set textwidt ddm 26768 0.0 0.3 2680 764 pts/0 R 23:28 0:00 ps ux [output much abbreviated] The pid is the number in the second column of the output. So, say you wanted to get rid of that vim process, because it's not responding. Usually, this should suffice: $ kill 26736 Without specifying a signal, by default kill uses the TERM signal. This signal tells the process which receives it to terminate. It normally allows the process to clean up after itself, to make sure no work is lost, for example. Of course, if the program is broken, it may not respond to the signal. Sometimes, more stubborn processes require a heavy hand. For these, you can use the KILL signal. This unconditionally terminates a running process. [Actually, there are exceptions to this, but they're not really important for this discussion.] So the example above would be re-written thusly: $ kill -KILL 26736 The signals also have numbers, and you could use them instead. The last command could be more concisely written: $ kill -9 26736 Much of this is documented in the manuals that come with Red Hat. You might want to have a look at those, or at a book like O'Reilly's _Running Linux_. The meanings of the rest of the columns in the output of ps are documented in the man page for the ps command. > I have, from time to time, had apps hang and not respond and the > only recourse I have found is to log out. I know that is a weak way > to handle the issue Not only that, but it may not really work. IOW, the process may be left hanging around, if it's really stuck. You won't see it running, but it might still there... It will show up in the output of the ps command. > computer for two years, but the documentation and man pages are > often completely useless because they assume way too much in user > knowledge. I understand where you're coming from, but if they didn't make such assumptions, the man pages would occupy gigabytes of space... A good book on running Linux, or the RH manuals for that matter, will teach you just about everything you'll ever need to know for day-to-day use of a Linux system. For the rest, there's lists like this one. :) - -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+C9oIHEnASN++rQIRAplaAJ0a7nw7ZJxUPjVRbbRrTJBSW4BgDgCgw06J wdwxSEd72Jhod0NAdZ+DCkg= =iCB5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
