Tame Rogue Processes

ps, top, kill, nice — stop a runaway process eating CPU in production.

A intermediate Linux challenge worth 10 points. Solve it hands-on in a real Linux environment in your browser - no local setup, no fake shells.

The Challenge

Scenario: INCIDENT. The production API is at 95% CPU. A developer forgot to stop a stress test.

Your tasks:

1. Find the process named "stress_test" using ps aux or pgrep
2. Kill it gracefully with SIGTERM (kill -15 or just kill)
3. If it does not stop within 5 seconds, force-kill with SIGKILL (kill -9)
4. Write the PID you killed to /tmp/killed_pid.txt
5. Confirm the process is gone

Commands to learn: ps aux, pgrep, top, kill, kill -9, pkill

Run check when done.