UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

OK. Let's go at this from another direction.

If you type:

who am i

you wil get a response like:

root pts/0 Apr 10 03:53 (:0.0)

pts0 is the terminal window I typed the 'who am i' command. Now if I type:

who -uH

I get:

NAME LINE TIME IDLE PID COMMENT
root pts/0 Apr 10 03:53 . 1177 (:0.0)
root pts/1 Apr 10 03:53 00:01 1176 (:0.0)

All users logged into your system would be listed under the NAME column. You'll notice the PID column, This is the pid of the shells running in the two windows I have open, as root. OK, now lets run:

ps -ef | grep 1177

on the PID of shell running on /dev/pts/0. I get:

UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1177 1171 0 03:53 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
root 1252 1177 0 03:55 pts/0 00:00:00 ps -ef
root 1253 1177 0 03:55 pts/0 00:00:00 grep 1177

You'll see that 1177 is the PID of bash and the PPID of both 'ps' and 'grep'. You'll also see that in the TTY column, it also references the TTY the commands where run in.

Basically, with the use of 'ps -ef' and 'who -uH', you can determine any command run by any user in any window or terminal. I hope this helps. -mk

thanks mk for the detailed info.. but well, i think we are pulling out somewhere else!

let me explain once again.

i have invoked some 'netscape' (not a single one.. more) for example. I did not use any terminal window to invoke this but a desktop action. fine i know the process id.
when i need to kill that .. i can use

ps -u $LOGNAME|grep netscape

i get like this

ps -u $LOGNAME | grep netscape
8018 ? 0:00 netscape
8090 ? 0:00 netscape
8089 ? 0:17 netscape
8017 ? 0:13 netscape


in these process ids.. i need to kill only one netscape.. I can identify the window.. but not the process id corresponding to that.

adding more info...
i can do this with X-Kill... i can invoke "xkill" and click that window and it dies.. but when my system hangs because of that particular 'netscape'
i can not access "xkill", so i do a remote login and i want to kill only that process..

in this case, is there a solution?

Thanks,
sskb