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robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
Surely there must be plenty of other hints already on the site about how to exit hung processes...
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
I agree. ps -U [username] will give you the PID of whatever process you (as '[username]') are running. Then just kill whatever hung process you have created. Dropping into root (via 'su' or 'sudo') should really only be done as a worst-case scenario.
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
A hint here sloppily recommending unnecessary root usage? <irony>Shocking.</irony> It's a familiar complaint, but Rob doesn't seem to be very interested in fixing the problem. Almost every hint that this site that publishes that begins with "log in as root" or "sudo to root" does not have to be done this way. Lots of people have complained that such advice is irresponsible, including myself, but these amateurish, half-correct hints keep getting published as is. It's enough to make me, for one, take everything published here with a big grain of salt: each hint may contain at its heart a pretty clever idea, but more often than not the execution of that idea can and should be done in some much better way. A lot of the time, the suggested procedure is sloppy, risky, and inefficient, but that's how it's been for years now, and I don't see any reason to assume that the situation will ever improve at this point. ---
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
Fork me, and here I've been assuming that "Works" implies accurately written. That accuracy is a given.
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
Fork me, and here I've been assuming that "Works" implies accurately written. That accuracy is a given. Ever heard of Rube Goldberg? He was an inventor that specialized in coming up with ridiculously elaborate ways to do simple things. Take, for example, his simplified pencil sharpener: Open window (A) and fly kite (B). String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape and eat red flannel shirt (F). As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H) which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J). Smoke (K) enters hole in tree (L), smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N), pulling rope (O) and lifting cage (P), allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R), exposing lead. Emergency knife (S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can't work. It'll work, I guess, but no one can seriously say that this is a "simple" way to sharpen a pencil. Much of the advice published on this site comes across the same way that Goldberg's over-complex inventions did. Yes, most of them work, in that they will ultimately accomplish what they set out to accomplish, but more often than not there's a much more streamlined way to accomplish the same thing. Moreover, any hint that tells the user to log in as root is playing with fire. Sometimes, that or something like it is necessary -- there are some things that just have to be done with elevated access priviliges. On the other hand, requesting these priviliges through sudo is usually more prudent than opening up a root shell, or god forbid activating the root account and logging into Aqua as root -- hint, THAT IS NEVER NECESSARY. EVER. And in some cases, as this hint, the person submitting the hint tells people to log in as root for no reason at all. This hint is actually a clear example of the trend: the Finder, like most every other application most people run, is launched with your user account's ownership & priviliges. If it was running under a system account, then it would make sense to use root to tinker with it, but that's not the case here. Therefore, there's no reason at all to invoke root here, via sudo or otherwise. (Hint: if you do a ps -aux and the process you want to kill is running under your account, then you don't need root access to work with that process. Get it?) Gee, Rob, but that kinda calls into question the integrity of all these hints, doesn't it? Of the site itself? Well, in my opinion -- yes. Unfortunately. Please don't get me wrong -- there's a lot of great material here! However, there's also a lot of landmines: hints suggesting doing irresponsible things, or accomplishing reasonable things in a sloppy way. It would be all to easy to pick up a lot of bad habits by copying everything you see here without developing an awareness of this kind of thing. And unfortunately for new users, I can see where this kind of thing might not be obvious. Honestly, in my opinion, the best way to get a feel for this is either buy & read a great Unix book like Unix Power Tools, or find some good mailing lists or Usenet groups where there are experienced, knowledgable people to learn from. This site isn't a bad resource to turn to, but it really just skims the surface and never quite seems to put the pieces together in a coherent way. This is okay, as far as it goes, but it really helps to seek out a deeper understanding of things as well... ---
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
From your post it sounds like you're now going to assume that every hint is not accurate or the best way to do it. For the most part, hints are well-written and accurate and a decent way to achieve the objective. However, rob can't test every single hint and can't make sure that every single hint is described in the best way possible. So while this hint really doesn't need sudo (and in fact isn't the best way to do it either), it certainly doesn't mean all other hints suffer the same problems.
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
Thanks to those who clarified the grain of salt. I agree with the philosophy, and find the posters here to be remarkably straightforward and helpful.
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
Mistakes will be made here by yours truly. It's happened before, and it will happen again -- it's a fact of life, and I won't promise that it's not going to happen again. There's simply too great a volume of information to deal with to commit to 100% mistake-free hints. Hence, I rely on the comment system to help catch those mistakes, so that future readers will see both the original hint and the follow on comments.
However, since I'm only one person, there's no way I can read every one of the thousands of comments that are posted to the site -- it's all I can do to try to keep up with the submissions and the email requests for help, pointers, references, etc. As much as I'd love to read every comment on the site, I'd much rather use my very sparse free time to visit with my wife and daughter. Hence, if you really want to get my attention about something, send me an email -- I wouldn't have even seen this thread if a user hadn't sent me an email. With all that said, yes, there's a mistake in this hint -- you don't need sudo. Now that it's been noted in the comments, I don't really see the point in changing the original article -- if I do that, I might as well then delete all the comments, since they'd be redundant. However, in those cases where a hint is (a) proven brutally wrong or (b) proven to be very dangerous, I will go back and either amend or delete the hint as appropriate. I do NOT feel this hint falls in to that category. If you don't like my approach, nor believe in my rationale, then you are, of course, free to start another hints site with a different approach. I'll just continue to do my best, and hope it's good enough for the majority... -rob.
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
"However, in those cases where a hint is (a) proven brutally wrong or (b) proven to be very dangerous, I will go back and either amend or delete the hint as appropriate. I do NOT feel this hint falls in to that category."
robg: I can't believe you posted this "hint"!
4 months later it's still posted, but I'm glad it is. It may be brutally wrong but the response comments contain a ton of interesting information which I learned some useful and important things from. This is a more valuable site for having that post still on it than it would be without it. |
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