On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 22:38, James McKenzie wrote: > Jesus M. Rodriguez wrote: > > Try kill -9 <pid> sometimes kill doesn't work. When in doubt -9 it :) > > Works everytime. CTRL+Z simply puts it into the background. > > I try in order: > > kill <pid> > kill -2 <pid> > kill -15 <pid> > kill -9 <pid> > > However this would not kill a DEFUNCT process. Anyone got an idea on > how to do this? A defunct process is also called a zombie. You can not kill something that is already dead. :) Such processes usually result from the parent being killed or exiting with out sending the exit code to the child process. As far as know these will hang around until you reboot the system. Would be good to try to identify the program that is generating the zombies and see if there is a fix. It really should clean up after itself. -- Response brought to you by AutoReponder 0.1 a product of Magic-8-ball productions. (version 0.2 will feature correct answers!)