RE: RE: Killer

I'm never sure why people bring out the flamethrower to light a candle. I have a little rant on "please stop using kill -9" that I post to comp.unix.questions when I see postings like this. Basically, -9 is harmful because it doesn't give the process a chance to clean up. Try a 2, a 1, and a 15, waiting 1 second each time. If all those fail, then a 9.

Also, -9 is "kill 9 to everyone in the process group". You want +9, certainly!

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Comment on RE: RE: Killer

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RE: RE: RE: Killer by tye (Sage) on Aug 05, 2000 at 08:42 UTC
Actually, that is one of my pet peeves, too. It has been a long time since I've seen someone type "kill" at a Unix shell prompt, so I've become desensitize (too much Win32 -- also part of why I didn't test this). Also, thanks for catching the too-literal translation of /bin/kill to kill(). -- tye (but my friends call me "Tye")	[reply]
Re: RE: RE: Killer by cybear (Monk) on Jun 09, 2002 at 03:46 UTC
Merlyn has got your number ergowolf. -9 like using Nitro. Fun, but not productive. I like to use the applications normal shutdown procedure, if possible and if it has one Then kill -15 - "please shut down now little process" then kill -2 - "come on and shut down now." then and only then kill -9 "die, die vile process!!"	[reply]