Can't kill process

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xyz

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What can be done about a process that refuses to be killed? In my case it's Adobe Acrobat. It's not responding and does not die in response to either a "kill" command from the terminal or the usual force quit. Any ideas?

Thanks! :confused:
 
Originally posted by genghiscohen
What group & owner are shown for the process?
If it's a zombie, I believe only a restart will kill it.
:(
Click to expand...

If it is a zombie its parent process just needs to check up on it and it will go away, so a restart is not really necessary. Also zombies do not use any resources beyond the entry in the procedure table, so a couple won't hurt anybody. Now you can forkbomb a machine with zombies as well as any other process but then that is not really the issue here.

Just for reference the reason zombie processes exist is to pass the processes exit code back to its parent. When a process exits the exit code is stored in the process table until the parent checks up on its child process to read the code. If the parent forgets to check or is tied up doing other stuff then the zombie process will hang arround for a while.

-Eric
 
I have had the QT player and others refuse to go away. No command or amount of time (several days) made it go away. Logout would be timed out.

There appears to be times the parent process just outright neglects to check up on its children. Is there a child services department we can call? :)
 
In my case it was not a zombie. It just wouldn't die... until sometime in the night. This morning it was gone. Perhaps one of my kill commands finally reached it.
 
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