F11: kill -9 doesn't work

[Terry Barnaby]

On 07/24/2009 10:40 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Terry Barnaby wrote:
>> On 07/22/2009 02:07 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 01:02:09PM +0100, Terry Barnaby wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I have noticed on several occasions, that running "kill -9<pid>" on
>>>> a GUI 3D process that is locked at 100% CPU usage (X-Server 100% also)
>>>> does not work. The 100% lockup I'm sure is due to the currently buggy
>>>> 3D support (ATI in my case), but I am surprised that I cannot kill
>>>> either the GUI or X processes. Only a reboot appears to work.
>>>>
>>>> Has something changed here ??
>>>
>>> If you provide more details, such as the actual process you're
>>> running, people might be able to try to duplicate the problem. I've
>>> never seen an occasion where kill -9 didn't work, but that doesn't
>>> mean it's not possible with some horribly written code.
>>>
>> The system in question is a dual Xeon system running Fedora-11 with
>> all updates
>> to 2009-07-22. Graphics board is an ATI RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO].
>> I have some applications installed from rpmfusion including paraview.
>>
>> Currently if I run paraview, X goes to 100% and I can no longer
>> operate the system via mouse/keyboard. Via a network login I
>> can "killall -9 X" but that does nothing to X. I have also
>> tried killing paraview in the same way with no effect (possibly
>> after trying to kill X).
>>
> I hope this is a typo, process "X" is long gone, the X process is called
> "Xorg" now. I assume you had a finger check and actually killed the real
> X process.
>
On F11 "Xorg" is hard linked to "X" and "X" is the program started.
So in "ps" listings the XServer process is named "X" and to kill it
with "killall" you need to do a "killall -9 X" ...