[techtalk] killing processes on dead pts/n 's

[Eric R. Turner]

kill -9 <pid>

   or

kill -SIGKILL <pid>


My understanding is that this MUST work because programs cannot block
the SIGKILL signal.

Eric

BTW, some processes automatically spawn child processes, so if you don't
kill the parent process then a child process will be created each time you
kill another one. This shouldn't apply to mutt nor vi, though.

On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, David Merrill wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> I access my linux box from work with PuTTY, and occasionally I lose my
> connection. When this happens, I wind up with a process (mutt usually,
> or vi) that is still running, that I sometimes cannot kill using
> "kill", or with top. It seems to be because the process no long has a
> pts associated with it.
> 
> Is there any other way to reliably kill such a process and free its
> resources? It's not a huge problem, but after I've accumulated a dozen
> or so of these, it bugs me.
> 
> tia,
> 
> -- 
> Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
> Linux Documentation Project                   david at lupercalia.net
> Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org
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> 
> "Violence accomplishes nothing."  What a contemptible lie!  Raw, naked
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> ever employed.  Perhaps the city fathers of Carthage could debate the
> issue, with Hitler and Alexander as judges?
> 
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