A Decade of Kill Bugs
0 comments · historical, linux, unix
- Comments19
–Rank now
#1Peak rank
3Days on list
408Score · 7d
Nov 2, 2026First seen
Rank · 7 days
On Lobsters
historicallinuxunix
- Score
- 109
- Comments
- 19
- Submitted by
- acg
- Tags
- historical, linux, unix
- Site
- alangrow.com
Story details from Lobsters ↗ · linked article on alangrow.com.
Trending history
A Decade of Kill Bugs was first seen on Lobsters · Hottest on Nov 2, 2026. Since then it has appeared in 94 checks on 3 different days. Its best position was #1 of 25, reached on Nov 3, 13:51 UTC. It dropped off the list after Nov 4, 20:21 UTC.
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Last 14 days
Best rank per day (UTC).
2
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4
Oct 26today
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From the discussion
A few top-level comments from Lobsters, shortened. Read the full thread on Lobsters.
Oh dear, this is the kind of slapstick that’s so painfully cringe it’s just sad. I was a bit surprised by the early history: my guess would have been that killing a negative PID was introduced with the rest of the process group / job control features in BSD in the early 1980s. So I had a look in the CSRG archives: *…
I thought this was a great article. I appreciate the length they went to digging into the topic and contextualized it with historical facts. Like I didn’t know process groups were a thing and have been a thing since 1986. So much more to learn about. Thanks for sharing.
The article does *not* say that procps' kill suffers from quality issues, but this seems to be one of the implicit take-aways. It is not too hard to add unit tests to exercise the various cases, and this would have found the issues and avoided the regressions. What are the tests like? Why weren't thorough tests added…
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Is A Decade of Kill Bugs trending on Lobsters right now?
Not at the moment. It was last on the list on Nov 4, 20:21 UTC, after 3 days of trending.
What is the highest rank A Decade of Kill Bugs reached?
#1 on Lobsters · Hottest, on Nov 3, 13:51 UTC. Trendoday checks this list every 30 minutes.
How long has A Decade of Kill Bugs been trending?
It was first seen on Nov 2, 2026 and has been on the list on 3 days (94 checks) since.