Question

How do you find the process ID of a specific process and kill the process? I am using python3 on a kali linux vm

Answer 1

What is Process?

• Process is nothing but an occurance of an program or application on Linux system.
• We can simply say it as task.Generaklly when process is executing, it keeps changing from state to state.
• Process contains two states.
• Running: Means process is executing.
• Waiting: Means the process is waiting for an event.
• Generally system administrators will take care of Process management. Sometimes process management icludes killing of processes.

How do you find the process ID of a specific process?

In Linus operating system, every process has a seperate PID(Process ID) which is used to identify it.
We can identify the process id by using following command:

pidof: It is used to identify the processID.

Syntax: pidof python (It identifies process id that python is running)

ps aux | grep: We can use ps command in combination with grep to find process id.

ps aux | grep -i python   

How do you kill the process?

We can use 'kill' command to kill the identified processid.

Syntax: Kill 3174.

kill command produces a SIGTERM signal and sends to process. That SIGTERM signal asks process to kill itself.
It is a safe approach whicha avoids killing of child processes and unreleased memory.

kill - 9, it is used for instant killing purpose. It generates SIGTERM signal and that signal won't ask and kills immediately.