How to kill thunar?

[kerryhall]

I got a message about an SD card being ejected incorrectly (not true, I was careful to eject it before removing) and now thunar is crashed and can't be killed.

Thunar's window is a black / undrawable window for all instances, and kill -9 doesn't work on the PID. ie, the process still lives after kill -9.

I tried reinserting the SD card but no luck.

I just want to recover my thunar sessions if I can, and failing that, at least be able to kill it so I can restart and use it without rebooting.

[oswaldkelso]

Try

pstree

to confirm the system thinks it's still running then

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pkill -f Thunar

[kerryhall]

Yep, it's still running, and sadly, that command did not help.

[cuckooflew]

I Don't think this would work, maybe "thunar" , but

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pkill -f Thunar

no.
in fact on my system as "thunar", all lower case did work, and as a normal user.

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40144 cuckoo     28    0   12M   37M onproc/3  -         0:02  0.93% thunar

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$ pkill -f thunar

or

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cuckoo$ pkill 40144

(should work)
But, if that still does not work:
Use 'top', or 'pgrep' to see the full process info, then try , as root ,

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# pkill (PID)

EG, Top shows me Firefox, is PID 79061 to kill FireFox :

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#pkill 79061

Additional details:

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$ man pkill

or 'man pgrep'.

[oswaldkelso]

Interesting. So what did pstree show Thunar or thunar? Anyway I'm glad it's killed.

I don't use xfce or Thunar, but suspect that my really old "Thunar" xfce 4.8 on my Dragora system has been either updated up stream or Debian must tweak it. I only use Bulk-rename and fantastic that is the naming on that leaves a lot to be desired.
Exec=/usr/lib/Thunar/ThunarBulkRename %F

Hopefully they renamed that also

[kerryhall]

kill -9 <PID> as root does not work.

How do I resolve this?

[Bloom]

Then your only recourse is to reboot your computer.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

"thunar", all lower case did work, and as a normal user

^ This.

[Bloom]

"thunar", all lower case did work, and as a normal user

^ This.

Ow, I missed that. Of course it couldn't find a misspelled name. And unlike "some other OS", case matters in Linux en Unix!

[cuckooflew]

Post by kerryhall » 2020-06-23 18:25
kill -9 <PID> as root does not work.

How do I resolve this?

So I will say again:

Looks like the OP missed it as well, it should work and won't hurt anything to try, I have had situations where 'kill' did not work, but 'pkill' did.

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pkill -f thunar

And if that does not work, try using the PID, instead of thunar.

[kerryhall]

It's the correct pid and the correct signal.

It simply does not work.

Further examination shows the process in the "Uninterruptible Sleep" state.

Why is it not possible to a kill a process in that state? Seems like an absolutely insane design choice.

Can I recompile the kernel with some flag that says "yes, in fact, if a cheap sd card stops working I don't want to have to #&@*$ reboot?"

[cuckooflew]

It simply does not work

What do you mean "it" ? Did you try using 'pkill' instead of kill? also

Further examination shows the process in the "Uninterruptible Sleep" state.

What shows this ? show some real out put,...You might be able to try to wake it up,
or just reboot, like bloom suggested, maybe try :

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 killall -9 thunar

++==================================

Thunar's window is a black / undrawable window for all instances, and kill -9 doesn't work on the PID. ie, the process still lives after kill -9.

Show us what the output of this is.

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$ pgrep -l thunar

==========================================
Or , some search foo here, https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/12/4-ways-to-kill-a-process-kill-killall-pkill-xkill/

4. Xkill Command – kill a client by X resource

xkill is the simplest way to kill a malfunctioning program. When you want to kill a process, initiate xkill which will offer an cross-hair cursor. Click on the window with left cursor which will kill that process.

See

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$ man xkill

for details, I suggest read it with care :

man xkill

DESCRIPTION
Xkill is a utility for forcing the X server to close connections to
clients. This program is very dangerous, but is useful for aborting
programs that have displayed undesired windows on a user's screen. If
no resource identifier is given with -id, xkill will display a special
cursor as a prompt for the user to select a window to be killed. If a
pointer button is pressed over a non-root window, the server will close
its connection to the client that created the window. ----snip----

Works quite well, so any way there are various options.

[kerryhall]

When I say "it has no effect", I mean the process is still running after sending the signal to the PID.

The pid in my case is 1531.

Here is a list of commands that have no effect. All commands have been run both as my user and as root:

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pkill thunar
pkill -HUP thunar
pkill -INT thunar
pkil -QUIT thunar
pkill -KILL thunar
pkill -TERM thunar
pkill -STOP thunar

killall thunar
killall -HUP thunar
killall -INT thunar
killall -QUIT thunar
killall -KILL thunar
killall -TERM thunar
killall -STOP thunar

kill 1531
kill -HUP 1531
kill -INT 1531
kill -QUIT 1531
kill -KILL 1531
kill -TERM 1531
kill -STOP 1531


xkill works to clean up the stale windows, but I still can't launch thunar again and continue to use my desktop!

I know the process state is in "uninterruptible sleep" from:

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kerry     1531  1.0  0.2 687152 83856 ?        Dsl  Jun08 241:35 thunar

This is a problem with the kernel, full stop. I only hope the kernel provides some sort of compilation flag such that I can say "Yes, I do want the ability to kill a process in the uninterruptible sleep state."

I know this is a common problem for NFS shares that become unavailable, but NFS has a mount option used as a workaround. Thunar has no such workaround AFAIK, and I'm tired of rebooting my system every time an SD card has a little trouble. I want my uptime measured in months, not hours, and I use SD cards dozens of times per day, phone, rpis, dashcams, DSLR, etc, etc.

[cuckooflew]

Thank you for showing the additional information, sadly it looks like you can not kill it , actually you could, maybe, but it is not simple, quick etc.
So, I see 2 choices, just reboot, I know you don't want to, but , if you consider how much time has been spent on this thread, and how much time would have been spent if you just rebooted, but anyway, now you know, ------
Or, the other choice : I have read this: https://tanelpoder.com/2013/02/21/peeking-into-linux-kernel-land-using-proc-filesystem-for-quickndirty-troubleshooting/
You could read it, and try some of the things it shows, but it is complicated, and even then, it still might not be possible to kill it.

by kerryhall » This is a problem with the kernel, full stop. I only hope the kernel provides some sort of compilation flag such that I can say "Yes, I do want the ability to kill a process in the uninterruptible sleep state."

I don't believe there is such a flag, but that would be a 3rd option, send this in to the developers, as a bug report, for details: https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
Use the mail list for any feature request, and also for any bugs that are very difficult to fix due to major design considerations.

by kerryhall » ----snip----and I'm tired of rebooting my system every time an SD card has a little trouble. I want my uptime measured in months, not hours, and I use SD cards dozens of times per day, phone, rpis, dashcams, DSLR, etc, etc.

Is this something that happens often ? Maybe consider trying a different file manager, check your hardware and SD cards, etc. This should not be occurring that often, if at all,.....are you sure you are umounting, ejecting correctly ? I have noticed over the years, busy people tend to pressure their selves, and try to rush things way to much, thus making mistakes , and actually causing their selves more problems and down time, where as a careful patient person, may seem slow, but in the long run they get more done, and more "up time", because very seldom do they break things, or make mistakes that cause system problems and down time. I am NOT saying that you are to blame, just saying, I would try to find the cause of the problem, that seems to be occuring when you use or change SD cards, phone, rpis, dashcams, DSLR, etc.Are you unplugging some and plugging in others, I also have had trouble with Thunar, crashes...and kind of stopped using it , most of the time, often the crashes have left me with a "locked up" system, but that would be another topic, simply using a different file manager solved that for me...take care and have a good day

[Bulkley]

Before shutting down to kill something persistent I simply log out and back in. That will kill anything that is GUI related.