I have a process running on my mac. In Activity Monitor whenever I kill the process it just comes back but with a new PID. How can I kill it for good?
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Depends on what it is and why you want to kill it permanently. It reappears because that's how it is designed to work.
It was dolly drive software. I had uninstalled it. However this appears to be left over after the uninstall. I cannot seem to get rid of it. Nor find out where to locate the culprit.
Did you use their uninstaller? If not then there is a launch agent installed somewhere. Most likely in the /Home/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder. If it's not there, then look in the /Library/LaunchDaemons/ folder. Or you can download EasyFind 4.9 and search for it.
Once you find it you should put it in the Trash. Then restart the computer. Then Empty the Trash.
Wow. What a pain.
I tried this software to see if it would be a full backup solution - it's not. It is a file or directory specific backup - like carbonite and the rest. Makes sense given the bandwidth but it wasn't clear at all in the way it was promoted. So . . . no big deal, I'll just uninstall - oh but wait - there is not easy way to do this and a bunch of processes still remain churning away!! Oh well - no problem, I'll just go to the web site to see how to uninstall. Doh!!! Nothing. Not a single article on how to properly uninstall all of the automatically self starting programs: four of them:
dollycloned
dssbackup-local
dssbackup
RevoScheduler
Well that is a poor show - I guess I'll have to use an ap uninstaller. Guess what. You can't. The processes won't quit - not even force quit or manual force quit. Unbelievable.
So what I ended up doing is tracing the offensive undead files to
the USER Library folder Application Support -> Dolly Drive Revo. AHHH. There you will find the offesive little buggers. Delete them, spray them with pesticide, douse them with Holy Water. And Voila. Next run your ap uninstaller and hopefully that will be the last time you will have to deal with this ridiculous system.
Cirrus Logic needs to find a much more honest and user friendly way to remove their product from a Mac when it is unwanted. Good Luck and Happy Hunting.
Process will not die.
