Amanda Knox wrote:
>
> Just This Girl wrote:
>
> > Did you try 'kill pid' or 'kill -9 pid'? 'kill -9' should bring down
> > anything.
>
> Simple question (I hope):
>
> Why is it '-9' exactly? Are there different kill levels or something? What if
> I typed 'Kill -1'? Just curious, and I doubt I would have the know-how to
> find that exact answer in the man pages ;)
Kill has a variety of purposes.
Yep, there's a kill -1 (one). Let me open an xterm and type man kill.
(whoops. My 'man kill' has misformatted itself! I'll have to do
this from memory.)
kill -l lists all the kill options. (that's ELL, not ONE)
Of course, this lists the signals, which isn't terribly explicable to
even someone like me. Let's see if I can translate:
The 'kill' command sends a signal - a command from the OS - to the
process named in the command.
The number lists which signal is sent.
Some common ones:
1 (sighup) is 'hang up' - signals the shell it's no longer connected
to the user. It's used for shell-less programs like daemons as a signal
to reload their config files.
9 (sigkill) is 'kill' - close down, regardless. It is like signal 15,
but can't be caught.
15 (sigterm) is 'terminate' - close down, in a controlled fashion. It
signals the program to shut down - and can be caught by the program.
Well written programs will try to catch this and cleanup after themselves.
For more information on signals, try 'man 2 signal' and 'man 7 signal'
or just 'man -k signal', if the first two aren't useful on your system.
(HINT: if you want a command line within X-windows, you DO NOT have
to leave X-windows to get it. I use 'xterm', available in my GUI menu
under 'Xshells'.)
Jenn V.
--
Humans are the only species to feed and house entirely separate species
for no reason other than the pleasure of their company. Why?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenn Vesperman http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
