A.P. Lawrence

error message from kill

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From - Mon Sep 17 06:38:54 2001
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From: rja.carnegie@excite.com (Robert Carnegie)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Subject: Re: Users Process still active after logging out
Date: 17 Sep 2001 03:06:23 -0700
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bill@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote in message news:<GJnn8B.1o2@wjv.com>...
> In article <3BA142F7.B214F069@att.net>, Steve Fabac  <smfabac@att.net> wrote:
> 
> >I have just started writing the following script to run from cron
> >to kill the orphaned processes. It's still in testing (just logging now
> >looking for inappropriate processes listed in killidle.log) but when I
> >tried uncommenting the system( "kill " $2 ) command, it killed the
> >specified process. 
>  
> >My question is why system( "kill -15 " $2 ) results in a usage message
> >for kill?  The "kill " $2 by itself worked but may be more severe than
> >I want. I'd prefer to run "kill -15 " $2 followed with a sleep and then
> >"kill -9 " $2 to cache any process that ignores the -15 signal.
> 
> Actually the prefered order is typically is SIGTERM - aka 15 - a
> software-termination signal, then a SIGINT - aka 1 - interupt
> the program - before you perform a SIGKILL - aka 9 - terminate with
> extreme prejudice.

"kill" by default is "kill -15" which we all agree is preferred.
As to why an error message, evidently something is wrong when it
gets to the awk line "bob = system( "kill -15 " $2 )" but I can't
read awk.  Is it possible that $2 is coming up empty sometimes?
"kill" and "kill -15" with no other parameters both get the message
"Bad argument count" on our OpenServer 5.0.6A.

You don't have a stray quote mark in the rest of the awk script?
Those have fascinating consequences.  I don't think a separate
script, or function, or single-word alias for "kill -1", &c.,
is the way to go.  (But feel free.)

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

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