imodkillgroup(1)            General Commands Manual           imodkillgroup(1)



NAME
       imodkillgroup - Kill process group or process tree given one process ID

SYNOPSIS
       imodkillgroup  [options]  pid  [pid...]

DESCRIPTION
       Imodkillgroup is a Python script to kill one or more sets of related
       processes.  It works in two different ways. 1) For a given process ID
       (PID), it can find the ID of the process group that it belongs to and
       issue a command to kill the whole process group.  2) Given the PID of a
       parent of a set of processes, it can find the tree of child processes
       and kill each member of the tree.  The program operates differently
       depending on the operating system and type of Python being run:

       Linux or Mac OS X: Group-killing is done by default, and tree-killing
       is done if the -t option is given.  With tree-killing, the program
       stops all processes at one level before issuing a ps command to find
       children of those processes.  Tree-killing is needed when killing pro-
       cesses run by Processchunks on the local host, because they have the
       same group ID as Processchunks itself.

       Killing is done with SIGKILL by default, or with SIGTERM if the -e
       option is given.  When this option is used with tree-killing, each
       stopped process is continued just prior to the kill.

       Cygwin Python: Group-killing is done by default, and tree-killing is
       done if the -t option is given.  With tree-killing, the program does
       not stop any processes before killing them because current Cygwin has
       trouble killing processes after stopping them.  It is thus vulnerable
       to a process starting a new child after the list has been constructed
       and before it has been killed.  Do not use this option unless it is
       essential for killing just some members of a process group.  In any
       case, this option is not needed when killing from Processchunks.
       Killing can be troublesome in Cygwin if the computer is heavily loaded.
       By default, the program will issue a second kill command for a particu-
       lar group if there is any kind of error message returned from the first
       kill.  If the second kill results in a "No such process" error or no
       error, then no error is reported and the program exists with a 0 sta-
       tus.

       The option -s can also be used in Cygwin to get a process status list-
       ing with ps and find all the members of the groups before killing.  The
       program will then run a new ps after issuing the kill commands and, if
       there are any group members still running, it will issue new kill com-
       mands as needed.  This process is repeated up to 5 times.  However, if
       the system is heavily loaded, the initial ps may fail, and the program
       falls back to issuing a second kill for all groups, treating errors
       similarly to the default behavior.

       In summary, just use the default method with Cygwin Python.

       Windows Python: The psutil module must be installed to use this program
       with Windows Python. Only process trees can be killed, and the -t
       option is not needed.  The program stops all processes at one level
       before finding their children.  This seems to work fine, unlike in Cyg-
       win.  However, this program cannot be run with Windows Python to kill a
       process group where Cygwin Python was used to run jobs.

       The option -v can be used to get verbose output on the progress of the
       program.

AUTHOR
       David Mastronarde,  mast at colorado dot edu

SEE ALSO
       processchunks

BUGS
       The program is much more complicated than it should be thanks to the
       problems in Cygwin.



IMOD                                 5.2.0                    imodkillgroup(1)