FWIW, *always* consider sending a SIGKILL (kill -9) the very last resort.  
Because SIGKILL cannot be trapped, the process doesn't have a chance to
clean up after itself.  I usually try SIGTERM (kill w/o argument or kill
-15), SIGINT (kill -INT or kill -2), SIGHUP (kill -HUP or kill -1) befure
resorting to SIGKILL.  I avoid telling users about kill -9, after they
find out about it they tend to use it for everything.  

my $.02, YMMV, rna

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Bart Garst wrote:

> On occasion I've had a program freeze (mostly it's xine). I haven't been
> able to kill the program when this happens.
> 
> I've tried restarting X, all that does is remove the applications
> interface from my screen. `ps -ax` still shows it as running.
> 
> I've tried `kill` and that has no effect.
> 
> So my question is how do you kill a process when `kill` doesn't work?
> 
> 
> Thx,
> Bart
> 
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