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kill a linux process that won’t die

February 25th, 2004 Tony Leave a comment Go to comments

Trying to kill a process in linux and it just won’t die?

Try this:

          kill -s 9 [PID]

DEAD

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  1. Kevin
    April 18th, 2007 at 08:12 | #1
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    Thanks for the tip, but it didn’t work for me. I was trying to run:

    sudo mt -f /dev/std0 erase

    to erase a tape and it got stuck. I’ve tried logging out of my session, using ’sudo kill -KILL (PID)’ and your suggestion and have not yet been able to make it dead.

    Anything else I can try? Thanks!

  2. Joe
    December 28th, 2007 at 11:11 | #2
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    I just tried it and it worked when I thought my computer was frozen. Except I did:
    kill -9 [PID]
    without that “s” thrown in there.

  3. Costel
    July 4th, 2008 at 01:59 | #3
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    works like a charm;
    eg. meld was stuck on ubuntu with large folders
    “kill -9 meld” did not work
    “kill -s 9 meld” id did