How To Kill A Hanged Program

Last Updated: June 4, 2009

Any program in Linux wether hanged or not can be killed.

A text-mode program which is in the foreground can be killed by pressing: CTRL-C Keep in mind that this will NOT work on larger applications, they block this to prevent accidental closure of the program.

To kill a program that is not in the foreground.
Type: ps
PS Stands for Print Status, and will show all the running programs for the currently logged in user. In the PS there is a PID (ProcessID) this is the number you need to use when wanting to kill a running program.

Type: kill 123
(NOTE: Replace 123 with the PROPER PID you found using the PS Command)

Remember as a user you can only kill processes that you own. ROOT can kill any process they wish.

To view all processes run on the current system.
Type: ps aux | more

The aboev lists all the processes currently running, even those without the controlling terminal, and with login name of the user that owns the proces. The display will be larger than your screen (most likely) so more was used, and it will stop the display after each screenful.

The kill command also has a shortcut which can be used to kill all programs by name.
Example: killall blog