CPU hog causes KDE System Guard to open too late.

[Ignazio Palmisano]

Andrew Jarrett wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 8:25 PM, Anton Rolls <anton at wilddsl.net.au> wrote:
>> Hi all,
[]

>>  Is there a way to raise the priority of the user
>>  interface or of KDE System Guard so that launching
>>  it is not held up by any cpu-hogging app ?
>>
>>  Regards,
>>
>>  Anton.
> 
> I am not sure about a way to give the KDE System Guard higher
> priority, but have you tried Ctrl+Alt+Esc?  This should change your
> cursor to an 'X' and you can click on Thunderbird to instantly kill it
> (BTW, you can hit Esc again to get your normal cursor back if you
> change your mind).  This might bypass the long wait for the System
> Guard and you will get to kill the app (which I assume is the point of
> opening the System Guard).  The problem might be that Thunderbird is
> hogging access to your drive and not letting the System Guard
> interrupt.  Whatever the problem is, you should definitely think about
> opening a bug report with Mozilla.
> 
> Andrew
> 

A trick I discovered recently is the -s option for kill:
kill -s KILL process
will send a KILL instead of the default signal, and that helped me get 
rid of some processes which weren't responding at all to any attempt I 
made at shutting them down.
HTh,
I.