Killing hung processes

Sometimes a process (for example, a web browser or other application) running on your computer may hang, that is, stop running. This does not harm the system, though you may lose work you have done in the hung process since the last time you saved it. You can simply stop the process and restart it. Stopping a process is called ``killing'' it.

In most cases, you can kill a process using the SCOadmin Process Manager. See ``Controlling processes with the Process Manager'' for details. You can start the Process Manager from the SCOadmin window on the desktop. Click scoadmin on the SCO sub-panel.

In rare cases, the Process Manager may itself be hung. To kill a process without using the SCOadmin Process Manager:

1. If you can still use the desktop, save your work in any other applications that you are using, then open a new terminal window.

   If you cannot use the desktop, press <Ctrl><Alt><F2> to switch to a console window. Log in (using the same login name as you used to log in to the session which is now hung).

2. Enter the following:
   
   ps -u login_name

   Replace login_name with your login name.

3. Identify the process that has hung on the list of processes which is displayed.

   The name of the process is normally recognizable as the name of the application that has hung. For example, the following line represents the Netscape browser:

      11014       ?    00:17:15 netscape-3.0.0
   

   The first element in this line (in this case, 11014) is the process identifier.

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   NOTE: This listing does not tell you that the process has hung. If you are in any doubt, you should save your work and exit any applications that you can, in order to narrow down the possible processes that may be hung.

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4. Enter the following:
   
   kill -9 process_id

   Replace process_id with the process identifier.