STOPPING A RUNAWAY PROCESS

or

Killing a Frozen Terminal Using a Second Terminal
 

If your VAX terminal does not respond because of a looping or runaway program the first thing to try is CONTROL-Y. CONTROL-Y is the system interrupt which should return you to the DCL prompt.

If that does not work or if your keyboard has locked up try resetting your terminal. Go into SETUP and do a reset. Or, more simply, turn the terminal power Off, wait a few seconds, then turn the power back on.

If you still have not regained control use a second terminal to kill your original process: Login to a second terminal using the same Username as the original.

Use SHOW USERS/FULL or WHO to display both sessions and use the Process Name, Terminal number, or Login time to determine which session is the original:

$ SHOW USERS/FULL
VAX/VMS User Processes at 11-NOV-1990 14:32:02.67
Total number of users = 1, number of processes = 2
Username Process Name PID Terminal
LABBRIDGET LABBRIDGET 00001B36 TTA1:
LABBRIDGET _TTA2: 00001A4E TTA2:

$ WHO
VAX/VMS Users on VAXB
11-Nov-91 2:32 P.M. Sunday
Username Process PID Device Login Time In Real Life
LABBRIDGET LABBRIDGET 00001B36 TTA1: Nov 11 13:27 Bridget O'Rourke
LABBRIDGET _TTA2: 00001A4E TTA2: Nov 11 14:31 Bridget O'Rourke



Note that if you press CONTROL-T the Process Name of your current session is displayed...

VAXB::_TTA2: 14:33:20 (DCL) CPU=00:01:01.05 PF=13672 IO=5242 MEM=1024


On the SHOW USERS/FULL or WHO display locate the Process Id Number (PID) of the original terminal and use the STOP/ID command to kill that session:

$ STOP/ID=00001B36