Script to kill Firefox

Even the best browser can lock-up on occassion . . .


due to malicious code, overwhelmed plug-in, whatever. When that happens on Linux you may be tempted to "kill" Firefox, but if you do, starting FF back up gives you that dreaded "log in under a different profile" option. The reason is a lock file present in your user directory.

I wrote a litle script that closes any open FF windows, and also deletes that pesky, hanger-on of a lock file if you aren't able to close FF properly.


A couple notes before the script --

• You need xdialog on your system to use the scripts as-is. If you want to use the scripts without xdialog, just delete the xdialog parts. You won't get a warning or success feedback, but the script will still do the job.
  
  
• To ease use of the script, I make a keybinding to it so I can run it a a moment's notice. I simply add this line

  key "Alt+Ctrl+q"	killFirefox
  

  to my "keys" file under icewm. (/usr/share/icewm/keys) You'd have to see your WM documentation to impliment that in KDE, Gnome, etc.

Stick it in your path

#!/bin/bash
# killFirefox script by Paul Sherman 
# does not just kill firefox-bin, but also removes lock file 
# from user home dir so that firefox can be restarted.
# uses the bash shell and xdialog

DIALOG=Xdialog
$DIALOG	--title "Firefox Destroyer" \
      	--yesno "This script will close any running instances of the Firefox browser.\nDo you wish to continue?" 0 0
	sel=$?
	case $sel in
		0) echo "Firefox will be destroyed.";;
		1) echo "OK, never mind" ; 
		   exit ;;
		255) echo "OK, never mind" ;
		     exit ;;
	esac 
killall firefox-bin
find "$HOME/.mozilla/firefox" -name "lock" -exec rm {} \;
$DIALOG --title "Success..." \
        --msgbox "If any instances of Firefox were open, \nthey are no more." 0 0
exit 0