UNIX (Linux) processes

All info about running processes is in /proc. See this comic.

• Race condition
• Managing processes in C

• pstree
• kill PID1 PID2 ... - kill ’em!
• pidof <program-name> - get process ID
• killall/pkill - kill all processes by name ( more info)
• bg, fg - bring to background/foreground
• jobs - show background processes (I think?)
• CTRL + Z - pauses the active process. Enter bg to continue its running in the background.
• disown -h - to make sure command will run after you close the ssh session.

This comic :)

The signals to send are SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGKILL. Maybe there are others. See How Linux Signals Work - SIGINT, SIGTERM and SIGKILL. See also How to Kill a Process in Linux with Kill, Pkill and Killall | PhoenixNAP KB.

SIGKILL will always work and shut the process abruptly. If it doesn’t work - the operating system has failed! SIGTERM (and SIGINT) may be handled by the program itself and thus may not work if the process is hanging.

If a program is hanging, killall [-9 | -KILL] <program-name> should do the thing. If you don’t know the name, you can look it up with top or something.