[PLUG] How to kill firefox.bin

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Mon Oct 8 00:12:50 UTC 2007


On Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:38:12 -0700
Eric Wilhelm <scratchcomputing at gmail.com> dijo:

> # from John Jason Jordan
> # on Sunday 07 October 2007 14:50:
> 
> >Thanks all. kill -9 15852 didn't work. I rebooted. But at least I
> > learned a new kill command.
> 
> That's odd.  Maybe there were more.  Next time try `ps ax | grep 
> firefox` or maybe `killall -9 /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin` 
> (assuming that this is the absolute path you see in ps.)

Actually, kill -9 15852 just didn't work, but kill -9 firefox.bin gave
me an error message that kill needed a process number. 

> Kill should always work on userland hang-ups (i.e. anything not 
> involving the kernel (like mount) should easily get the rug pulled from 
> under it without a reboot), and typically without even needing root 
> intervention so long as you're the owner of the given process.

I couldn't agree more, and I have no explanation for why kill didn't
work, other than the fact that it was a zombie. It seems to me that if
the owner of the process says to kill the process, then there ought to
be a command with sufficient force to kill it. (And I did sudo the
commands as well, just in case forefox.bin thought I wasn't the owner.)
Even if it's a zombie, the owner of the process ought to be able to
nuke it. Maybe I need a "really really really kill it and I mean it"
command.

This is not the first time that Firefox has done this to me. I wish
Opera would hurry up and get their final 64-bit version released. I
have the alpha installed and it actually runs better than Firefox.



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