Ubuntu – kill process with htop

htop

Sometimes I need to kill a process and for that purpose I enter htop, search (/) for some string and then intend to kill the associated process.

The problem is that usually the processes are in motion (due to new processes being added and attributes changing) – so by the time I pressed F9 and went on with "killing" the process the selected process is already a different one.

Is there a way to handle this?

The reason why I use htop is of course b/c I sometimes have to guess which is the right process to get rid of and just a string is not sufficient for identification.

Best Answer

After executing sudo htop, just use the arrow keys to select the process you want to remove and then press either F9 or k then select which signal you want to send in the list (using the arrow keys) and press enter.

If you just to ask "politely" a process to quit use 3 SIGQUIT.

If you want to make sure the process quits use 9 SIGKILL.

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Ubuntu – Kill process tree using terminal

This should help you!

pkill -TERM -P `PID`

Ubuntu – Anchor htop to one specific process

You can't anchor a given process line to the top but htop can follow a process if you press Shift+F. From the man page:

   F    "Follow" process: if the sort order causes the currently  selected
        process  to  move  in  the list, make the selection bar follow it.
        This is useful for monitoring a process: this way, you can keep  a
        process  always  visible  on  screen. When a movement key is used,
        "follow" loses effect.

Here I'm following my Firefox process:

enter image description here

Note that if you're only interested in one particular process, the -p <pid> will do what you want (12352 is the pid of Firefox on my system):

$ htop -p 12352

enter image description here

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Kill process tree using terminal

Ubuntu – Anchor htop to one specific process

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