how to kill shells

[user222]

i really need to know how to kill a new shell that ive started, especially if it was started from an x terminal, because the newly started just stay there and use memory

[lakerdonald]

type in either exit or Ctrl-D
-lakerdonald

[user222]

how can i type "exit" or "Ctrl-D" when ive just closed the xterm window???

[adrenaline]

type
ps faux
this will list the processes with pid numbers in the front. if your user started the shell then you can kill it without being root
kill <pid> #pid being the number of the process

[user222]

but kill [pid] refuses to kill shells, (and some other processes???)

[copycon]

Instead of just closing the shells xwindow you should type the command exit at the prompt in the shell window then hit enter and it will exit the shell and close the window.

[pongscript]

hey bro... shell actually run every time you boot youre system whether you like it or not ... if yoiu started shell manually then .. you maybe asking how to kill the shell you created .. if ever the shell count exceed in number of three or four... then this means you have extra shell running in background maybe a program is using it or just a runaway process .. you cannot kill the shell that has been run because a program is using it ...or maybe when you start a new shell this new shell overwrite the other shell in process... so you dont have to kill this... does your computer slows down.... on unused running shell dont actually eat much memory.... linux always find away to avoid this to happen or if ever this hapen your system always knows what to do...

[Dolda2000]

That's perfectly correct -- the shell will ignore the TERM signal. Instead, send it a KILL signal: "kill -KILL <pid of the shell>".

Are you sure that you're looking at the correct shell, though? It could be some legitimate shell that's started by something else.