From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-02-16T17:21:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Controlling a forked process

Michael Satterwhite wrote:
> If I start a process, is there some way that I can maintain control of
> it. More specifically, can I start a process and then at some point
> based on a user action kill that process. I see hints of that in the
> documentation, but I don't see anything that specifically addresses this
> case.
>   

Yes. The parent process should have the process ID of the child. With 
that you can do things like:

if (pid = fork)
  sleep 1
  Process.kill('TERM', pid)
else
  loop do
    puts 'KILL ME'
  end
end

Or you could kill with 'KILL', if you really need it dead RIGHT NOW -- 
but you might want to read 'man kill' first.