When FFMPEG hogs system resources, the first step is identifying the rogue process. SSH into your server and run:

ps aux | grep ffmpeg

This will show output like:

user     12345  120  5.2 987654 123456 ?       Rl   Mar31 120:30 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi

Once you've identified the PID (12345 in our example), you have several termination options:

Graceful termination:

kill -15 12345

Force kill if unresponsive:

sudo kill -9 12345

For more control, use htop for interactive process management:

sudo apt install htop
htop

Navigate to the FFMPEG process with arrow keys and press F9 to kill it.

Consider using nice and ionice when starting FFMPEG:

nice -n 19 ionice -c 3 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi

After killing FFMPEG, restart Apache to ensure clean state:

sudo service apache2 restart

Install monitoring tools to prevent future issues:

sudo apt install sysstat
sar -u 1 5  # Shows CPU usage every 1 second for 5 intervals

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When FFMPEG processes consume excessive resources on an Ubuntu server, you'll want to first identify the exact process IDs. SSH into your server and run:

ps aux | grep ffmpeg

This will show output like:

user     12345  180  5.2 487612 1048576 ?     Rl   Mar01 120:45 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi

There are several methods to terminate FFMPEG processes:

# Graceful kill (SIGTERM)
sudo kill 12345

# Forceful kill (SIGKILL)
sudo kill -9 12345

# Kill all FFMPEG processes
pkill -9 ffmpeg

After killing FFMPEG, check system resources to confirm recovery:

top -c
htop
vmstat 1

Consider implementing process limits:

# Install cpulimit
sudo apt-get install cpulimit

# Limit FFMPEG CPU usage
cpulimit -l 50 -p 12345

Alternatively, use nice to prioritize processes:

nice -n 19 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi

Create a watchdog script (/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg_watchdog.sh):

#!/bin/bash
THRESHOLD=90
PROCESS="ffmpeg"

while true; do
    CPU_USAGE=$(top -bn1 | grep "$PROCESS" | head -1 | awk '{print $9}')
    if (( $(echo "$CPU_USAGE > $THRESHOLD" | bc -l) )); then
        pkill -9 "$PROCESS"
        echo "$(date) - Killed $PROCESS with CPU $CPU_USAGE%" >> /var/log/ffmpeg_watchdog.log
    fi
    sleep 30
done

Make it executable and add to cron:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg_watchdog.sh
(crontab -l ; echo "@reboot /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg_watchdog.sh") | crontab -

For more robust control, create a systemd service:

# /etc/systemd/system/ffmpeg.service
[Unit]
Description=FFMPEG Encoding Service
After=network.target

[Service]
User=media
Group=media
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i /path/to/input /path/to/output
Restart=on-failure
CPUQuota=80%
MemoryLimit=1G

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then manage with:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start ffmpeg
sudo systemctl status ffmpeg