On Wednesday 25 July 2007 22:08, HantsLUG Mail wrote:
> Some hours ago now I stared find in KDE to find a file.  Initially, it was
> running, but I could do other things and the HDD light was flickering on
> and off.
>
> Now, some hours later it is consuming virtually all the resources of the
> cpu and the HDD light is on constantly.  I have tried all normal methods of
> stopping it, to no avail.  I have succeeded in getting a "run" window open,
> with a view to running konsole, finding the pid and killing "find", but I
> couldn't actually launch anything.  I am sending this from my
> granddaughter's computer.
>
CTRL-ALT-1 should get you to a text console window, you may also be able to 
SSH in from another machine. Either way top should show you what it eating 
system resources, and I'd bet it famd, what ever is eating up resources can 
usually be killed - though you may need a kill nasty to really kill it.
e.g.
CTRL-ALT-1
$ top
[you get a screen of stuff, look at the PID of the biggest program, chances 
are it's something like famd or find, or some other user process belonging to 
you.]
$ kill ${pid_you_see_at_the_top}
may kill it
$ kill -9 ${pid_you_see_at_the_top}
box may be okay now,
CTRL-ALT-7 to get back to the GUI (probably number does sometimes vary)
Good luck - with patience there is normally no reason to reboot a Linux box, 
you should be able to find the errant process and kill it without resorting 
to a reboot - "Re-booting is a sign of weakness" - a Red Hat trainer I took a 
course from.
-- 
Adam Trickett
Overton, HANTS, UK
Linux? Il y a moins bien, mais c'est plus cher.
    -- anon