[Cbsupport] Not quite as ALMOST THERE as I thought. - A quick guide to ps, kill and man

Wed May 7 22:08:02 UTC 2003

Hi Cara,

More on the thread of what Shaun was saying..It is true ...You will need 
to close ALL file management windows (Konqueror windows) to unmount the 
floppy.

If it still reports a busy error (and all file management windows are 
closed) you should look to see what processes are running on your 
computer. It may be that Konqeuror is still running as a zombie process. 
(A process being something that is running on the computer, like a 
program).

To look at processes you'll need to open up a terminal. You don't have 
to be the root user to kill  the  processes that you have started.  To 
make this easy for me I have cut and paste the return of a ps aux 
command on my computer.

So you type ps aux after the dollar sign ($) prompt.

kylie at thinking:~$ps aux (and then press enter)

Returns

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.2  0.6  1208  416 ?        S    22:56   0:05 init [2]
root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [keventd]
root         3  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SWN  22:56   0:00 
[ksoftirqd_CPU0]
root         4  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [kswapd]
root         5  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [bdflush]
root         6  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [kupdated]
root         7  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [khubd]
root         8  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56   0:00 [kreiserfsd]
root        27  0.0  1.8  2600 1144 ?        S    22:56   0:00 
/sbin/devfsd /dev
root        72 53.8  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   22:56  18:48 [kapm-idled]
daemon     134  0.0  0.4  1316  276 ?        S    22:56   0:00 /sbin/portmap
root       207  0.0  0.8  1284  504 ?        S    22:56   0:00 /sbin/syslogd
root       210  0.0  0.6  1944  396 ?        S    22:56   0:00 /sbin/klogd
root       215  0.0  0.6  1216  400 ?        S    22:56   0:00 
/usr/sbin/apmd -P
 /etc/apm/apmd_proxy --proxy-timeout 30
root       227  0.0  1.2  4280  748 ?        S    22:56   0:00 
/usr/sbin/cupsd
root       397  0.0  0.6  1244  404 ?        S    22:57   0:00 
/usr/sbin/inetd
daemon     401  0.0  1.1  3596  704 ?        S    22:57   0:00 
/usr/sbin/jabberd
root       407  0.0  0.6  1296  412 ?        S    22:57   0:00 /usr/sbin/lpd
daemon     417  0.0  0.8  3448  500 ?        S    22:57   0:00 
/usr/sbin/jabberd
root       435  0.0  0.7  1336  440 ?        S    22:57   0:00 /sbin/cardmgr
kylie      592  0.0  6.9 23220 4316 ?        S    22:58   0:00 nautilus 
--sm-con
kylie      594  0.9  6.2 12460 3880 ?        S    22:58   0:18 
/usr/lib/gnome-pa
kylie      601 24.5 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:05   6:18 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      607  0.0 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:05   0:00 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      608  0.0 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:05   0:00 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      609  0.0 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:05   0:00 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      611  0.1 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:05   0:01 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      618  0.0  2.6  4256 1644 ?        S    23:07   0:00 xterm
kylie      619  0.0  1.7  2300 1060 pts/0    S    23:07   0:00 bash
root       622  0.0  1.8  2316 1152 pts/0    S    23:07   0:00 bash
root       709  0.0  0.9  1400  612 ?        S    23:10   0:00 dhclient
kylie      713  0.0 53.1 57060 32812 ?       S    23:10   0:00 
/usr/lib/mozilla/
kylie      742  0.1  3.5  4264 2216 ?        R    23:28   0:00 xterm
kylie      743  0.0  2.2  2300 1368 pts/1    S    23:28   0:00 bash
kylie      751  0.0  1.2  2488  752 pts/1    R    23:31   0:00 ps aux

The CAPS at the top indicate the column headings... :)

What you want to look for is the program konqueror running...and then 
you want to find it's process ID  (PID).

Now that you have identified the process number you can use the kill -9 
(PID) command.  If i want to kill an xterm (you can see I have two 
running) I could type

kylie at thinking:~$kill -9 618 (and enter)

And this would kill the process and my xterm would disappear.

In your case if a Konqeuror zombie was there - ps aux would show it up 
and you could kill it completely.

I have had to deal with this before (have reported it as a possible bug) 
- although it is not common.

Anway, perhaps a quick lesson in ps aux and kill -h  :) Useful at other 
times as you can do this to programs that have frozen.

I'm sure there are other ways to do this... perhaps others will point 
them out. If you use your help system you can look the "ps" and "kill" 
command up in the manual pages. The "aux" and "-h" are options that the 
commands can have; they are explained in manual (man) pages.  These are 
accessible via the KDE help System and through a terminal by typing:

man "insert command name you want to know about here" (enter)

For new users man pages in a terminal can be a little tricky to 
navigate. Use your up and down arrow keys to move up and down the man 
page (they are usually screen pages long),  using the space bar will 
allow you to navigate a page screen at a time, and pressing the q key 
will quit out of the man page. :)

Cheers,

Kylie

---
Kylie Davies
Victorian Branch Coordinator
Computerbank Australia Inc

Cara Rosehope wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I have found a few more problems as well as those listed in the earlie 
> message I have discovered that I can't get the floppy to unmount.
>
> Reported error
>
>    <unmount: /floppy:device is busy>
>
> Also, I can't change the font - a fairly major thing when I need to 
> proof read thousands of words,
>
> Cheers
>
> CARA
>
>