fork timing hole and runaway children

[D. B. Robinson]

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You could try to use 'renice' if you are running a 4.2 BSD system.  This
is the way I fixed a similar situation.  Find the username of the user who
started the runnaway, and then type (as root):

      renice +20 -u username

This should cause all of the little beasties (including the user's
shell) to go to sleep on most active systems.  You then can do the
killing at a little less hectic pace.