How to force logoff remotely?

[Andrew Robinson <awrobinson@xxxxxxx>]

This morning I found the screen on my Fedora box blank and the keyboard and 
mouse unresponsive. I could have rebooted, but I decided to try fix the 
problem less drastically. In my Solaris days, I could sometimes remotely 
log into a frozen workstation and kill the login process. Looking to do the 
same this morning, I ssh'ed into the fedora box from a Win2k laptop. The 
lowest numbered process owned by the user was this one:

andrew    4886     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [gnome-session <defunct>]

The name "gnome-session" looked promising, so I tried a 'kill -(harrison 
ford) 4886'. There appeared to be no effect.

I've included the entire process list below. Is there something I can do to 
force the logoff short of rebooting?

Thanks!

Andrew Robinson


[root@orpheus root]# ps -ef | sort -n +1 | more
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:04 init [5]
root         2     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [keventd]
root         3     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kapmd]
root         4     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root         6     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [bdflush]
root         7     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kupdated]
root         8     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [mdrecoveryd]
root        14     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [ahc_dv_0]
root        15     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [ahc_dv_1]
root        16     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [scsi_eh_0]
root        17     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [scsi_eh_1]
root        20     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root        86     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [khubd]
root      3717     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3718     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3719     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3720     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3721     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3722     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [kjournald]
root      3781     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [knodemgrd_0]
root      3782     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [knodemgrd_1]
root      4151     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 syslogd -m 0
root      4155     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 klogd -x
rpc       4183     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 portmap
rpcuser   4203     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 rpc.statd
root      4258     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apmd -p 10 -w 5 
-W -P/etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmscript
root      4298     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/smartd
root      4316     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 cupsd
root      4354     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root      4370     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 xinetd -stayalive -pidfile 
/var/run/xinetd.pid
ntp       4393     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 ntpd -U ntp -p 
/var/run/ntpd.pid -g
root      4415     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 sendmail: accepting connections
smmsp     4424     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 sendmail: Queue 
runner@01:00:00for /var/spool/clientmqueue
root      4435     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [gpm <defunct>]
root      4445     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 crond
xfs       4470     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 xfs -droppriv -daemon
root      4493     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 atalkd -f 
/etc/atalk/atalkd.conf
root      4494     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 smbd -D
root      4498     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 nmbd -D
daemon    4517     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/atd
dbus      4527     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon-1 --system
root      4539     1  0 Jan11 tty1     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty1
root      4540     1  0 Jan11 tty2     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2
root      4541     1  0 Jan11 tty3     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3
root      4542     1  0 Jan11 tty4     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4
root      4543     1  0 Jan11 tty5     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5
root      4544     1  0 Jan11 tty6     00:00:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6
root      4621     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 papd -f /etc/atalk/papd.conf
root      4625     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 afpd -c 20 -n orpheus -f 
/etc/atalk/AppleVolumes.default -s /etc/atalk/AppleVolumes.system
andrew    4886     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [gnome-session <defunct>]
andrew    4939     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent 
/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients
andrew    4943     1 34 Jan11 ?        08:13:22 /usr/libexec/gconfd-2 5
andrew    4948     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [esd <defunct>]
andrew    4950     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [bonobo-activati <defunct>]
andrew    4956     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [gnome-settings- <defunct>]
andrew    4984     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:01 [gnome-panel <defunct>]
andrew    4986     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:05 [nautilus <defunct>]
andrew    4997     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:51 [magicdev <defunct>]
andrew    4999     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [eggcups <defunct>]
andrew    5001     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [pam-panel-icon <defunct>]
andrew    5003     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:04 [rhn-applet-gui <defunct>]
root      5004     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [pam_timestamp_c <defunct>]
andrew    5006     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [notification-ar <defunct>]
andrew    5014     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [mixer_applet2 <defunct>]
andrew    5016     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [mapping-daemon <defunct>]
andrew    5018     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:03 [wnck-applet <defunct>]
andrew    5068     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [consolehelper-g <defunct>]
root      5069     1  0 Jan11 ?        00:00:00 [userhelper <defunct>]
andrew    5231     1  0 00:36 ?        00:00:00 [gnome-terminal <defunct>]
andrew    5233     1  0 00:36 ?        00:00:00 [bash <defunct>]
andrew    6352     1  0 04:18 ?        00:00:00 [stairs <defunct>]
root      6358     1  0 04:21 ?        00:00:00 [init <defunct>]
root      6399  4354  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 sshd: root@pts/0
root      6401  6399  0 12:31 pts/0    00:00:00 -bash
root      6452  6401  0 12:35 pts/0    00:00:00 ps -ef
root      6453  6401  0 12:35 pts/0    00:00:00 sort -n +1
root      6454  6401  0 12:35 pts/0    00:00:00 more