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I tried killing Firefox 3.5 from OSX command line using "kill -9 pid", and the process was still running

mini-2:~ prompt$ ps -ef | grep firefox

501 15087 183 0 0:00.00 ?? 0:00.00 (firefox-bin)

After this, I could not start firefox (as it said Firefox is already running) nor can I kill firefox (again).

What is going on? How can I fix this (besides logging of or restarting my machine) ?

3 Answers 3

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Possibly you have a 'stuck' process. If you run top, the first line will list if there is anything stuck. Likewise, if you run ps auxww, the eighth field will be a 'U' if something is stuck. (I learned about stuck processes when I couldn't reboot a server.)

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  • run ps auxww: mini-2:~ lydonchandra$ ps auxww | grep firefox lydonchandra 15087 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? E Sat07pm 0:00.00 (firefox-bin ) the eight field is 'E' rather than 'U'. So how did you unstick the stuck process?
    – Lydon Ch
    May 18, 2010 at 17:43
  • @lydonchandra I had to shut down my machine hard :( . It looks like 'E' indicates a program is exiting, and that you'll have to reboot. See serverfault.com/questions/85799/… May 18, 2010 at 17:59
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Have you tried force quitting it? Command-Option-Escape

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  • yes I tried that, and it didn't work. Now the firefox icon is nowhere to be seen.
    – Lydon Ch
    May 18, 2010 at 17:15
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Does a process still show in Activity Monitor? You should be able to find the Firefox process running there and kill the process or any parent processes that might be using it (Java or Flash for example may be causing a hang).

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  • No the process is not listed in Activity Monitor.
    – Lydon Ch
    May 18, 2010 at 17:22
  • That is extremely perplexing. Have you changed the view setting to see all running processes via the drop down option? If it truly is not there then I am REALLY stumped since as far as I've ever experienced every running processes is listed there. I'll keep an eye on this one then and hope for an answer as well.
    – Insomnic
    May 18, 2010 at 19:06

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