On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 07:59:19AM -0800, Dan Youngquist wrote:
> On 03/05/2015 07:27 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Thursday 05 March 2015 10:04:28 Baron wrote:
> >> Having closed Iceweasel, it still seems to be running
> > 
> > I have had this problem on and off in various versions over the years.  I do:
> > # ps ax | grep iceweasel
> > # <response>
> > # kill xxxx
> 
> Faster/easier:
> 
> killall -9 iceweasel

Too fast, too easy. Have you actually tried it?

My prediction is that if you do, you will leave Iceweasel or Firefox 
stuck in an unrunnable state. By using kill -9 you tell the operating 
system to just yank the rug out from under Iceweasel, without giving it 
a chance to clean up after itself. That means:

- anything that needs to be saved to disk won't be;

- the database may be left open, or worse, in an inconsistent state;

- lock files will be left in place.

I'm not willing to try it, but I'm pretty sure that if you do, when you 
go to run Iceweasel/Firefox again, it will tell you that it is still 
running. You need to find the two lock files, and delete them both. 
Worse, you may have screwed up the database, which could leave Iceweasel 
unable to track history, or destroy your bookmarks.

kill -9 is the equivalent of pulling the power cord. Use it only when 
everything else fails. Everything else in this case should be:

- try kill <processid> first;

- give it 30 seconds or so, and if it still hasn't closed, try 
  kill -HUP <processid>

- if and only if that too fails, then and only then consider kill -9.

Oh, and I dislike killall, since that risks killing too many processes. 
If you have something else running with iceweasel in the name, you'll 
accidently kill that as well. That's just my personal preference though.

-- 
Steve