Comments on: How to Kill a Running Process in Ubuntu (or any Linux distro)

By: nonamw

nonamw — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:47:36 +0000

sudo killall -9 firefox

By: nathan

nathan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:59:47 +0000

@factotum218 - edited the headline to make things more clear. Thanks!

By: factotum218

factotum218 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:48:20 +0000

You know what would be super cool and awsome? If you would somehow get the message across in the headline that this is for linux in general and not just a specific distribution.

Thanks!

By: BeeGee

BeeGee — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:37:26 +0000

pkill works fine in kubuntu …

By: JakeT

JakeT — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:43:13 +0000

I’ve always used:

killall firefox

or done it from htop (find the process, hit f6 or some such to kill).

It’s not foolproof, but it works most of the time.

By: Damien

Damien — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:45:00 +0000

I find it easier to grep for the application you’re looking for rather than search through the whole output of ps aux. Example: ps aux | grep firefox

Also, if you want to kill all instances of Firefox (or any other application you happen to know the ‘proper’ name of, use killall. Example: killall firefox

Also, using -9 isn’t recommended (I can’t remember why). It’s better to try kill without it and if that fails, use -9.

Also (this is the last one I promise), there is xkill. I have it in my quick links on my taskbar - if a GUI application is playing up, just click the xkill application and then use the mouse to click on the rouge application. Poof - gone!

Hope these help somebody,
Damien

By: SupercoW

SupercoW — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:38:23 +0000

killall firefox or killall -9 firefox can be used. On the other hand on KDE after a few attempts to close the window that is not responding, you gey a dialog offering to kill it.

By: Mats Utterheim

Mats Utterheim — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:51:51 +0000

As this asumes that you run X, then I can guess that it’s a graphical program that has crashed. Most often the easiest way to kill the process is:
alt+f2 and enter xkill

You’ll get a skull-shaped pointer and just klick on the window and the process behind it will be killed.

Another way is to start the GNOME-system-monitor and select processes there. It’s like ps aux, but graphical. Right-click on the process you want to kill and select “kill process”.

By: Can Bican

Can Bican — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:54:07 +0000

-9? It’s for murdering a renegade process, not for killing a running one :)

By: jherazob

jherazob — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:11:38 +0000

Since this is Ubuntu, why not:
System -> Administration -> System Monitor
right-click the offending process -> kill?

Your solution is pretty much distro-agnostic and can work even without X or over ssh, but if you’re on the GNOME desktop isn’t this easier?