= To terminate/end a Process =

The proper way to end a task/service is via: /etc/init.d/service stop|restart

If the service, or process isn't behaving, you can kill it with: kill PID #kills the PID #To find out the PID use “ps -eaf” or “top”

If the service is really not behaving, you can send a level 9 kill signal: kill -9 PID

If the computer is really really hanging, and bogged down, so much so that you cant do a “top” or a “ps -eaf”, you can kill it by name and all of the child processes using: killall -9 apache2

The above, killall worked for me on an extremely slow existing ssh connection. New ssh connections would not even open! On trying to open a new ssh connection the following error was recieved: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host Trying to log on locally resulted in “Login timed out”!!!!! As I was already logged on as root via ssh, I was just able to initiate the above killall for apache which ate up all resources.