[TriLUG] killing a process when 'kill -9' doesn't?

[Geoff Purdy]

> > Is there a means of killing a runaway process which doesn't
> > respond to 'kill -9'?  Is there a better way than 'reboot'?  I'm running
> > kernel 2.4.18.
> 
> that's happened to me
> 
> are you root when you kill it?

yes

> 
> try "ps -axj"
> 
> identify your process; see which process owns it (PPID);
kill the owner; you 
> may need to go up the chain of ownership;

I tried "ps -axj" to identify the PPID and kill the parent
process.  I was able to kill the parent with a normal
kill, yet the child process is still alive (using 99.9%
CPU).

This is not a production system so a reboot is a very viable
option, however I'm trying to wean myself from the habit of 
falling back on reboot.

Thanks for the suggestion.