Terminating Rogue Processes

Rogue processes are processes that have gotten out of control. It is important to be careful with these, as they may impact system performance, reliability, and usability.

Here are some things you can do to help you identify and terminate such processes:

The following command generates a process tree of all of the processes that belong to you on a given server (replace ULID with your university login ID):

pstree -U ULID -p

for more information about pstree, please see https://linux.die.net/man/1/pstree

Once you have identified the parent process responsible, you can terminate it with the following (replace PID with the process ID of the process you wish to terminate):

kill PID

If “kill” alone does not work, you can try:

kill -9 PID

If you simply wish to reset your session, and terminate all of your processes, please see: https://support.it.illinoisstate.edu/kb/resetting-linux-terminal-server-sessions-troubleshooting-login-it-and-rdp-connectivity/