Ubuntu

Task Manager for Gutsy?

Asked by coljohnhannibalsmith

Is there some kind of Task Manager for Gutsy?

It's a major headache to have one or more of your applications stop responding and have to wait for the "Force Quit" popup to appear. Trust me, I know when an application has stopped responding long before I ever see that message. Is there anything similar for Gusty and if so how do I invoke it?

Thanks, John

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Omegamormegil (omegamormegil) said : 		#1

There are different ways of doing this. The easiest would be to open the System Monitor. Click System>Administration>System Monitor, and go to the Processes tab. This is much like the the Task Manager Windows has.

Alternatively, you can add the System Monitor applet to your Gnome panel. To add an applet to the Gnome Panel, right click the panel, cick "Add to Panel", and drag and drop the applets you want. This shows you system resources (right click for options), and when you click the applet, it launches the System Monitor.

Probably the easiest way to close a misbehaving window is with the Force Quit applet, also addable to the Gnome Panel. Just click the applet, and click the window you want to close, and BAM!

If all else fails, such as when the mouse won't even work, you can open a terminal to end a process. Press the keys Ctrl+Alt+F1, and enter your username and password to login. Type (without quotes) "ps -ae|less", which will show you all running processes (process names are on the right), with their numeric process ID's, one page at a time. Use the arrow keys to find the process causing the system to hang. Note the process ID number (on the left), and press 'Q' to get back to the command prompt. To end a process immediately, type "sudo kill -9 123456", where 123456 is the process ID you obtained from the previous screen. It will prompt for your password for permission to kill the process. To get back to the GUI to see if you've unstuck everything, press Ctrl+Alt+F7.

An easier way to get out of a locked-up system is restarting the entire graphical interface by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. The downside of this, is that it will close all your running programs, which you may not want to do.

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coljohnhannibalsmith (john-wakefield2) said : 		#2

Thank you sir:

This is just what I was looking for.

-John