Unix command for "kill app with extreme prejudice?"

[Ricky]

iTunes is being a real (female dog). It won't allow me to get into it, and I found it in top but I don't know the command for forcefully quitting it. I know that it's kill, but doesn't it come in varying degrees? I need it to really die lol Any help is seriously appreciated.

 

[Klink]

Olla ricky,

If you type 'man kill' in Terminal, it will show you a list of kill signals that are available to you.

example:

Some of the more commonly used signals:
1 HUP (hang up)
2 INT (interrupt)
3 QUIT (quit)
6 ABRT (abort)
9 KILL (non-catchable, non-ignorable kill)
14 ALRM (alarm clock)
15 TERM (software termination signal)

 

[vanguard]

What you're looking for is kill -9 {process_id}.

As a standard practice, you should try kill {process_id} first. That allows the app to clean it self up. If that doesn't work, kill -9 should do the trick. The only problem is that you're relying on the OS to do the cleanup. I've never had a problem with that in any OS (except the dos based win 95/98/ME series) but I'm sure somebody has had a problem at some point.

(BTW, the windows thing was actually ctrl-atl-delete then shut down app, not kill)

 

[kilowatt]

Ok, I have a question about kill:

When the beta of Blender crashes on my macintosh (nearly every time I use it...), I ssh in from my bsd box, and try killing blender with the -9, and it doesn't get killed.

It will still show up on ps aux, and it still shows up on my screen. I end up power-cycling my G4 every time.

Anyone have a better option? (and shutdown -h now does not work either)

 

[blb]

If a kill -9 doesn't get rid of it, then the process is blocked in the kernel; if this happens consistently, that's a definite bug report for Apple. I've seen this happen twice to me (not with Blender, though), but I have yet to have it happen consistently (fortunately).