[Xastir] UpdateTime: Readline error: 9

[Tom Russo]

On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 07:43:35PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <Tyler at Parsons-Surveying.com> flavor, containing:
> I'm relatively new to Linux. What are "-9" and <pid>? Why not -7?

See "man signal" and "man kill" for details.

Kill takes a signal name or number.  Signal 9 is the "SIGKILL" signal that
essentially forces a program to stop running.  Signal 15 is "SIGTERM," 
the "TERMINATE" signal which is a less forceful instruction to stop running,
and the default signal sent by "kill" if you don't specify another.

So the real format is:

   kill -<signal> <pid>
which sends the signal <signal> to process number <pid>.  You get the pid from
a "ps" listing.  ("man ps")

Why not -7?   Because signal 7 is SIGEMT, the "emulate instruction executed" 
signal, and who knows *what* that'll do.  Probably nothing at all.

You can also give signal names instead of numbers:

  kill -KILL <pid>
or
  kill -TERM <pid>
etc.  See "man signal" for the list.  These are the two most common, and the
second is equivalent to "kill <pid>"

> Curt, WE7U wrote:
> > On Wed, 6 May 2009, Keith Kaiser wrote:
> >
> >> That was it. I tried to kill them but that didn't work, in the end I 
> >> had to reboot the machine. Do you have any idea how much Mac people 
> >> hate having to reboot?  Anyway, that did work.
> >
> >     kill -9 <pid>
> >
> > Use -9 when regular "kill" just isn't deadly enough.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation