Silly

[crschmidt]

Terminal.app is acting up. (Can't alt-tab to it, just get a beachball.) So I go to kill it in the dock. That doesn't work, so my next thought is "Hey, I'll just switch to a term and "killall Terminal"".

right. Because typing in a term doesn't require a working terminal... of course.

(Hey, it finally force quit. yay.)

Comments

[taral.livejournal.com]

There's a process monitor app that lets you kill things too...

[catyak]

All the machines here will allow ssh from the local subnet. My solution to locked-up desktops is to get in from another machine and kick things from there. If it's so badly screwed that local keyboard access and sshd refuse reasonable requests then it's the reset switch. All the Macs here have the root user enabled so I can ssh in and then su to root for particularly recalcitrant processes.

D

Term-based solution

[busbeytheelder.livejournal.com]

Assuming you thought to install X11, you could open a X-Term.