kill (terminate or signal a process)
It is sometimes necessary to kill a process (for example, when an executing program is in an infinite loop)
To kill a job running in the foreground, type ^C (control c). For example, run
% sleep 100
^C
To kill a suspended or background process, type
% kill %jobnumber
For example, run
% sleep 100 &
% jobs
If it is job number 4, type
% kill %4
To check whether this has worked, examine the job list again to see if the process has been removed.
ps (process status)
Alternatively, processes can be killed by finding their process numbers (PIDs) and using kill PID_number
% sleep 1000 &% ps
PID TT S TIME COMMAND
20077 pts/5 S 0:05 sleep 1000
21563 pts/5 T 0:00 netscape
21873 pts/5 S 0:25 nedit
To kill off the process sleep 1000, type
% kill 20077
and then type ps again to see if it has been removed from the list.
If a process refuses to be killed, uses the -9 option, i.e. type
% kill -9 20077
Note: It is not possible to kill off other users' processes !!!
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