How to kill a system process on terminal
Be very careful when killing system process with this procedure, use it only if you really have no other choise:
1- Open Terminal
2- Type: top on the shell
3- Find the number of the process you what to terminate Exp: If you what to kill NortonMiss it will be display like this:
262 NortonMiss 0.0% 0:00.02 1 21 19 68K 540K 436K 27.5M
4- You can't kill this process, is system protected, you need to logon as superuser, to do this, open an other window of the shell and type:
sudo kill 262
(the number of the process is different on each session, and depending on the application or process you what to terminate)
5- You'll be ask for your password, type it and press enter, the app will be kill! (when typing the password, it will not be display on the screen). To cancel the kill press CTRL+Z
NOTES:
Some system process will reboot after they are killed, but this command is usefull if the process hang up, when is rebooted it will work again on most cases.
A superuser have access to all the process and has no restriction on the use of commands on UNIX. Be sure not to reveal the password of your computer to anybody, because if they logon as superuser on your mac, they can deleted any folder.
Use very caution on the use of the "sudo" command.
iMac (Summer 2001) 600Mhz RAM=384MB Slot loading Mac OS X (10.3.5) CD-RW, 40 GB hard drive, Slot loading CD-RW
1- Open Terminal
2- Type: top on the shell
3- Find the number of the process you what to terminate Exp: If you what to kill NortonMiss it will be display like this:
262 NortonMiss 0.0% 0:00.02 1 21 19 68K 540K 436K 27.5M
4- You can't kill this process, is system protected, you need to logon as superuser, to do this, open an other window of the shell and type:
sudo kill 262
(the number of the process is different on each session, and depending on the application or process you what to terminate)
5- You'll be ask for your password, type it and press enter, the app will be kill! (when typing the password, it will not be display on the screen). To cancel the kill press CTRL+Z
NOTES:
Some system process will reboot after they are killed, but this command is usefull if the process hang up, when is rebooted it will work again on most cases.
A superuser have access to all the process and has no restriction on the use of commands on UNIX. Be sure not to reveal the password of your computer to anybody, because if they logon as superuser on your mac, they can deleted any folder.
Use very caution on the use of the "sudo" command.
iMac (Summer 2001) 600Mhz RAM=384MB Slot loading Mac OS X (10.3.5) CD-RW, 40 GB hard drive, Slot loading CD-RW
iMac (Summer 2001) 600Mhz RAM=384MB Slot loading, Mac OS X (10.3.5), CD-RW, 40 GB hard drive, Slot loading CD-RW
