I have encountered processes that even Task Manager could not kill.
All the damn time. I typically use Linux, so having a process I can't even force kill is a severely annoying concept.
This has happened to me only once on Linux. I still tell stories about it.
It was a CD burning program stuck in uninterruptible sleep! Trapped in a system call into the kernel that can never be interrupted by a signal, it was truly unkillable. The SIGKILLs simply piled up never to be delivered.
THIS is your big "You won't believe what happened to me...." story???
sigh
When I was 14, I took the power cord for the original PS1 and shaved the rubber off the end until metal prongs were sticking out. Then I noticed if the outlet end was plugged in, and you touched the metal prongs on the other end, you couldn't drop it. It would electricute you, but it would also stick to your skin for 5-10 seconds as it electricuted you.
So being a 14 year old male, I did the only logical thing. I put it on my penis.
It was quite shocking!
I used to stick forks in the electrical outlets.
Now I post Linux memes.
That tracks.
I can't believe what happened next
I....can't tell what is happening here. Is he having an orgasm? Is he supposed to be a priest, or a slave?
That's Frodo Baggins on the verge of death thou fool!
I don't recall. Just having fun. Be well!
I would assume that was a kernel issue.
In this case it was a driver holding that thread captive and making an assumption about the hardware eventually responding to a request which never completes.
So yes indeed it was the kernel, and ideally the driver could be written better, but that’s probably easier said than done when the hardware can do weird things.
This was a long time ago, so for all I know the issue has been long corrected.
It honestly was the thing that pushed me to Linux. Once I could no longer kill programs at-will I couldn't handle it. xkill ftw.
Yeah... It doesn't happen often and when it does, it's usually a driver and/or hw issue that is likely to leak memory and/or hold file descriptors but procs in D (uninterruptible_sleep) state do happen. It's really obnoxious that murdering them with SIGKILL does nothing.
A while ago I kept a shortcut in the taskbar that ran a batch file that killed any unresponsive task, worked even on those tasks that Task Manager can’t seem to close. As long as explorer was still running and I could alt tab and press that button it worked 100% of the time
How do you determine if a task is unresponsive?
It was something like this. It would just kill all tasks that haven’t responded in X amount of time. Obviously this is not a great solution as it can cause data loss and you could accidentally close more than just the program you intend to close, but sometimes you have little choice.
That's proper mental, I don't know why you'd keep that running unnecessarily (unless fiddling with something you can easily replicate).
Im pretty sure it's still not going to catch the stuck things that aren't actually killable
It wasn’t something I kept running, just a shortcut that would run the batch file and kill anything that wasn’t responding at the time. I’m not sure if this uses the same command I had set up at the time, but I remember it having a 100% success rate. I had it for one game in particular which would crash and stop responding but any attempts to get to the task manager (even with keyboard) would fail.
I haven’t had to use anything like this since Windows 10 as now you can just press Windows+Tab and move the task to a different desktop and then get into the task manager on your original desktop.
But I also remember the times when there was no foe Task Manager could not kill.
“This computer is hereby deconstituted.”
SIGTERM: stop that.
SIGKILL: That was not a request.
Case power button: listen here you little shit
I flip off the breaker, just to be safe.
Sounds like it's not just me that goes "ok then, try arguing with this" when power cycling an unresponsive computer.
Meanwhile, a Linux user wipes blood off a sledgehammer with "SIGKILL" written on the handle
Doesn't seem to work for me. If Rustdesk goes rogue, it refuses to die. I might need to practice some more command-line-fu though.
One time I was playing modded Skyrim when it froze/crashed at the loading screen
So I summon task manager, it hides behind the frozen game. I alt+tab and start blind keying to Skyrim to end it, been here hundreds of times, but nothing happens and the Skyrim world music STARTS???!!!
ALT+TAB to see TM and Skyrim both reporting non-responsive. Tab to Skyrim and press w, clearly hear character moving and reacting to my input
Try again to end process via ALT+F4, No dice. Try via TM, still unresponsive
I had to reboot my PC with a hard power button press that time and I still don't fully understand what the FUCK happened
New Vegas does the same thing, hiding Task Manager behind itself when it crashes. I found a workaround by using Ctrl+Alt+Del, clicking to make the cursor appear, and then pressing the Windows key which makes the taskbar appear. Then the game window can be closed from the taskbar.
That's why you enable the end task option for when you right click on the icon in the taskbar.
$ sudo kill -9 1
fuck you
$ echo "c" > /proc/sysrq-trigger
☠
As someone who's relatively new to Linux, anyone want to explain what these lines would do? I'm aware of KILL, but dunno what the '-9' refers to. Not familiar with sysrq-trigger
The kill command allows you to specify which type of kill signal you want to send. -9 sends signal 9 or SIGKILL, and we're sending it to pid 1.
That would force kill systemd, which I just have to assume will send your computer to a crashing halt.
The echo command is writing "c" to a file at /proc/sysrq-trigger which I don't really know how it works but this suggests you'll "crash the system without first unmounting file systems or syncing disks attached to the system."
I haven't installed fuck so I'm not sure how that works
Task Manager stopped responding
I think you mean top. Followed by a k and the enter key twice.
TIL you can kill processes straight from top
You can, but I recommend btop. It's much more cooler.
Only if the process is a bottom.
Well done
Wait until you type c
Did you mean xkill?
Only works on xorg
I miss xkill. I recently switched to Wayland but xkill worked instantly 100% of the time.
I work as a helpdesk tech and I always say that I killed a task in task manager when writing up ticket notes.
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't removed task manager yet.
As a windows user
WIN+R -> CMD -> TASKKILL /F /T /IM "*"
... I use it too much. Appa often block my screen :|
killall
Note: Only use it sparingly. We don't want another skynet.
I have encountered processes that even Task Manager could not kill.
All the damn time. I typically use Linux, so having a process I can't even force kill is a severely annoying concept.
This has happened to me only once on Linux. I still tell stories about it.
It was a CD burning program stuck in uninterruptible sleep! Trapped in a system call into the kernel that can never be interrupted by a signal, it was truly unkillable. The SIGKILLs simply piled up never to be delivered.
THIS is your big "You won't believe what happened to me...." story???
sigh
When I was 14, I took the power cord for the original PS1 and shaved the rubber off the end until metal prongs were sticking out. Then I noticed if the outlet end was plugged in, and you touched the metal prongs on the other end, you couldn't drop it. It would electricute you, but it would also stick to your skin for 5-10 seconds as it electricuted you.
So being a 14 year old male, I did the only logical thing. I put it on my penis.
It was quite shocking!
I used to stick forks in the electrical outlets.
Now I post Linux memes.
That tracks.
I can't believe what happened next
I....can't tell what is happening here. Is he having an orgasm? Is he supposed to be a priest, or a slave?
That's Frodo Baggins on the verge of death thou fool!
I don't recall. Just having fun. Be well!
I would assume that was a kernel issue.
In this case it was a driver holding that thread captive and making an assumption about the hardware eventually responding to a request which never completes.
So yes indeed it was the kernel, and ideally the driver could be written better, but that’s probably easier said than done when the hardware can do weird things.
This was a long time ago, so for all I know the issue has been long corrected.
It honestly was the thing that pushed me to Linux. Once I could no longer kill programs at-will I couldn't handle it. xkill ftw.
Yeah... It doesn't happen often and when it does, it's usually a driver and/or hw issue that is likely to leak memory and/or hold file descriptors but procs in
D(uninterruptible_sleep) state do happen. It's really obnoxious that murdering them withSIGKILLdoes nothing.A while ago I kept a shortcut in the taskbar that ran a batch file that killed any unresponsive task, worked even on those tasks that Task Manager can’t seem to close. As long as explorer was still running and I could alt tab and press that button it worked 100% of the time
How do you determine if a task is unresponsive?
It was something like this. It would just kill all tasks that haven’t responded in X amount of time. Obviously this is not a great solution as it can cause data loss and you could accidentally close more than just the program you intend to close, but sometimes you have little choice.
https://superuser.com/questions/1432304/how-can-i-automatically-kill-unresponsive-apps-and-games-with-a-batch-file
That's proper mental, I don't know why you'd keep that running unnecessarily (unless fiddling with something you can easily replicate).
Im pretty sure it's still not going to catch the stuck things that aren't actually killable
It wasn’t something I kept running, just a shortcut that would run the batch file and kill anything that wasn’t responding at the time. I’m not sure if this uses the same command I had set up at the time, but I remember it having a 100% success rate. I had it for one game in particular which would crash and stop responding but any attempts to get to the task manager (even with keyboard) would fail.
I haven’t had to use anything like this since Windows 10 as now you can just press Windows+Tab and move the task to a different desktop and then get into the task manager on your original desktop.
But I also remember the times when there was no foe Task Manager could not kill.
“This computer is hereby deconstituted.”
SIGTERM: stop that.
SIGKILL: That was not a request.
Case power button: listen here you little shit
I flip off the breaker, just to be safe.
Sounds like it's not just me that goes "ok then, try arguing with this" when power cycling an unresponsive computer.
Meanwhile, a Linux user wipes blood off a sledgehammer with "SIGKILL" written on the handle
Doesn't seem to work for me. If Rustdesk goes rogue, it refuses to die. I might need to practice some more command-line-fu though.
*Cortana will remember this
Task manager: not responding
One time I was playing modded Skyrim when it froze/crashed at the loading screen
So I summon task manager, it hides behind the frozen game. I alt+tab and start blind keying to Skyrim to end it, been here hundreds of times, but nothing happens and the Skyrim world music STARTS???!!!
ALT+TAB to see TM and Skyrim both reporting non-responsive. Tab to Skyrim and press w, clearly hear character moving and reacting to my input
Try again to end process via ALT+F4, No dice. Try via TM, still unresponsive
I had to reboot my PC with a hard power button press that time and I still don't fully understand what the FUCK happened
New Vegas does the same thing, hiding Task Manager behind itself when it crashes. I found a workaround by using Ctrl+Alt+Del, clicking to make the cursor appear, and then pressing the Windows key which makes the taskbar appear. Then the game window can be closed from the taskbar.
That's why you enable the end task option for when you right click on the icon in the taskbar.
$ sudo kill -9 1fuck you$ echo "c" > /proc/sysrq-trigger☠
As someone who's relatively new to Linux, anyone want to explain what these lines would do? I'm aware of KILL, but dunno what the '-9' refers to. Not familiar with sysrq-trigger
The
killcommand allows you to specify which type of kill signal you want to send.-9sends signal 9 or SIGKILL, and we're sending it to pid1.That would force kill systemd, which I just have to assume will send your computer to a crashing halt.
The echo command is writing
"c"to a file at/proc/sysrq-triggerwhich I don't really know how it works but this suggests you'll "crash the system without first unmounting file systems or syncing disks attached to the system."I haven't installed
fuckso I'm not sure how that worksTask Manager stopped responding
I think you mean
top. Followed by akand the enter key twice.TIL you can kill processes straight from
topYou can, but I recommend
btop. It's much more cooler.Only if the process is a bottom.
Well done
Wait until you type
cDid you mean xkill?
Only works on xorg
I miss xkill. I recently switched to Wayland but xkill worked instantly 100% of the time.
I work as a helpdesk tech and I always say that I killed a task in task manager when writing up ticket notes.
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't removed task manager yet.
As a windows user WIN+R -> CMD -> TASKKILL /F /T /IM "*"
... I use it too much. Appa often block my screen :|
killall
Note: Only use it sparingly. We don't want another skynet.
Task Manager, kill this guy!