Macos – How to kill a process on Mac OS X that’s “trying to exit” (E)

killmacosprocess

On Mac OS X 10.6 I sometimes get processes that show up in "ps" as "E", which the man page says means they're "trying to exit", but they won't. "kill -9" doesn't work, neither does waiting. Is there any way to get rid of them? I usually wouldn't care, but they sometimes block an entry in the Dock.

Best Answer

Do you get an error when trying to kill? What if you specify the PID, like kill 12345?

Also, you can try a killall, like this: killall program but keep in mind it will kill anything that matches, so be a little specific with the program name, dont just put killall fi or something that may match more than one program, otherwise you may have unexpected results.

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