Killing a Runaway Process
Occasionally, someone will start a process or job going that does
something unexpected, or just cannot be stopped by the user. Sometimes,
this job is a stuck login that a user cannot boot, or that a user cannot
be bothered to boot.
In this case, it's a good idea to know how to kill a stuck or runaway
process.
su root
ps x
A list of processes will scroll across the screen, each with a
number assigned to it. This is the PID, or process ID number. Locate
the process to be killed and type
kill -HUP PID
where PID is the process ID number.
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Created: May 12, 1999
Last updated: May 13, 1999