Linux / UNIX kill unresponsive hung SSH session

If you have an unresponsive or hung SSH session on a Linux or UNIX system, you can try to kill the session by using the kill command. This will terminate the process associated with the session and close the connection.

To do this, you will need to find the process ID (PID) of the SSH session. You can do this by using the ps command with the aux options, which will show all processes on the system and their associated PIDs.

For example:

ps aux | grep ssh

This will show output similar to the following:

user1   1234  0.0  0.1  1234  1234 pts/0    00:00:00 ssh user@example.com
user2   5678  0.0  0.1  5678  5678 pts/1    00:00:00 ssh user@example.com

In this example, the PIDs for the two SSH sessions are 1234 and 5678.

To kill one of these sessions, you can use the kill command followed by the PID of the session. For example:

kill 1234

This will send a signal to the process with PID 1234, which will terminate it and close the connection.

If the kill command does not work, you can try using the kill -9 command, which sends a stronger signal that can force the process to terminate. For example:

kill -9 1234

Keep in mind that killing a process can cause data loss or corruption, so it should be used as a last resort when other methods have failed.