Ubuntu terminal not responding tips

Have you ever seen this problem when using Ubuntu terminal? You run a command, then it just hang there, not responding. You press Enter, Esc, Ctrl+c, Ctrl+z, type anything but it won't respond. Well, I always have because I work in terminal a lot.

Don't worry. You do remember that Linux is multiuser and multitasking operating system, do you? So, we don't have to restart our Ubuntu system. Here is what I do:

1) Open other terminal and run ps command. Use grep command to grab the not responding terminal. We need the PID (process id) of the hanged command.

luzar@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep tty1
root      4356  0.0  0.2   2568  1212 tty1     Ss   13:04   0:00 /bin/login -- 
root      4362  0.0  0.3   4144  1808 tty1     S+   13:05   0:00 -bashluzar
4619  0.0  0.1   3004   756 pts/0    R+   14:05   0:00 grep tty1

2) Use the kill command to terminate the not responding process.

luzar@ubuntu:~$ sudo kill 4362
[sudo] password for luzar:
luzar@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep tty1
root  4624  0.0  0.1   1716  516 tty1   Ss+  14:05  0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
luzar 4626  0.0  0.1   3004  756 pts/0  R+   14:05  0:00 grep tty1

3) If it's still there, you can force terminate with kill -9 option or just kill the login terminal.

luzar@ubuntu:~$ sudo kill -9 4628
luzar@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep tty1
root   4632  0.0  0.0  1716   512 tty1   Ss+  14:06  0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
luzar  4634  0.0  0.1  3004   752 pts/0   R+  14:06  0:00 grep tty1

Here is what happened in the not responding terminal when we were using the kill command: