linux kill processes

Try this command. Usually zombie does'nt terminate even with kill -9 signal. But this command is worth a try. Else reboot the system.

ps ax | grep | grep -v grep | awk {'print $1'} | xargs -t kill -9

Enjoy..
Kumar.

You can't kill zombies, they are already dead.

Really, zombie processes are already finalized, but some of its resources (usually at the file system) could not be released. Even "kill -9" won't remove it from the process table until its resorces have been freed.

Now, you you want to kill a series of process with one command line, try this:

ps axw | awk '// && ! /awk/ {print $1}' | xargs kill -9