Stop a stray, or let it be

Impound strays#

1. On the Pinder's page, tick the strays to stop, in The pound.
2. Press Impound the ticked ones. It asks first.
3. Read how each went in the Impound log.

For each ticked process, the Pinder:

• Checks it again with a fresh snapshot. It refuses unless the process still has the same start time (so a reused process id is never stopped by mistake), and still counts as a stray.
• Stops that process, not its tree, after checking its start time once more. It never forces the stop, so a process this Windows user doesn't own fails, rather than being forced. It waits up to 5 seconds for it to end.
• Logs it: stopped, refused and why, or failed and why.

Its children

Impounding stops one process. Its children are listed on the stray beforehand; once their parent is gone they're orphans, and show up in a later round, for you to impound too.

Let it be#

Let it be on a stray adds it to the allowlist, and it leaves the pound at once. The entry is its name, plus its command line as a pattern, with each hidden value as *.

Some programs change their command line each time they start (adb's --reply-fd 828, say). For those, widen the pattern: in Settings, under Allowlist, edit its Command-line pattern, with * for anything. Each entry has Remove, to let the Pinder flag it again.

Other ways to keep a process out#

• A program you always leave running detached, a shared server of your own: add it to Shared servers (Advanced). It's never an orphan, but is still watched for CPU.
• An agent of your own that isn't on Castellan's staff: add its port to More agent ports (Advanced). Whatever answers /api/ping there is never a stray.
• A whole kind of program: take its name out of Runtimes watched (Advanced).

See The Pinder's settings, files and commands.