Sometimes you want to kill the Rstudio server for certain reasons.
The browser-based RStudio session repeatedly froze, even after reopening it. Restarting the session or signing out did not help, and the visible environment was empty.
ps aux | grep rstudio
rstudio+ 4559 0.2 0.0 10098692 211780 ? Sl 2023 163:43 /opt/rstudio-pm/bin/rstudio-pm --config /etc/rstudio-pm/rstudio-pm.gcfg
rstudio+ 4560 0.0 0.0 7312 536 ? S 2023 0:00 tee -a /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-pm/rstudio-pm.log
rstudio+ 5129 0.0 0.0 21036608 25260 ? Sl 2023 3:27 /opt/rstudio-pm/ext/rstudio-launcher /var/lib/rstudio-pm/launcher_internal/localhost.localdomain/launcher.conf
rstudio+ 5430 0.0 0.0 19073016 14492 ? Sl 2023 3:47 /opt/rstudio-pm/ext/rstudio-local-launcher --server-user rstudio-pm --enable-debug-logging 0 --scratch-path /var/lib/rstudio-pm/launcher_internal/localhost.localdomain/Local --heartbeat-interval-seconds 5 --job-expiry-hours 24 --plugin-name Local --config-file /var/lib/rstudio-pm/launcher_internal/localhost.localdomain/launcher.local.conf --launcher-config-file /var/lib/rstudio-pm/launcher_internal/localhost.localdomain/launcher.conf
rstudio+ 6021 0.0 0.0 351876 129384 ? Ssl 2023 3:31 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver
root 1759740 0.0 0.0 351876 87724 ? S Jan10 0:00 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver
root 1787130 0.0 0.0 351876 95968 ? S Jan11 0:00 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver
jordan 1883199 21.0 0.0 18036132 837736 ? Sl 14:45 0:31 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rsession -u jordan --session-use-secure-cookies 0 --session-root-path / --session-same-site 0 --launcher-token A0076E0C
jordan 1883380 0.0 0.0 12136 1052 pts/0 S+ 14:47 0:00 grep --color=auto --exclude-dir=.bzr --exclude-dir=CVS --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=.hg --exclude-dir=.svn rstudio
root 3071258 0.0 0.0 351532 208 ? S 2023 0:00 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver
root 3290658 0.0 0.0 339316 196 ? S 2023 0:00 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver
→ sudo kill <PID> (Do not terminate the main server process; that would interrupt the whole service.)
The investigation also considered session state under ~/.local/share/rstudio/sessions/active/.
✅ Solved:
The cause was an R Markdown chunk producing excessive output. Renaming or rebuilding the affected Rmd resolved this incident.