# How to kill a monster workflow 👹

**URL:** <https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [December 17, 2023, 2:01pm UTC](https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206 "2023-12-17T14:01:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danielhollas](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/aiida.discourse.group/danielhollas/32/4_2.png) [@danielhollas](https://aiida.discourse.group/u/danielhollas)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2023, 2:01pm UTC](https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206/1 "2023-12-17T14:01:39Z")

</div>

So, uh. Somebody (I hope inadvertently) decided to push the limit of our AiiDAlab deployment and submitted a WorkChain that is kind of big. 😓  
Specifically, `verdi process list` now counts ~18000 processes (and counting!) in various stages of “running”. I tried to increase the number of daemon workers and tweak various poll intervals but the overall system is hopelessly stuck, and `verdi process kill` either hangs or times out saying that process is unreachable.

While I have some ideas how to prevent this situation in the future, the question now is, how do I stop this monster? 👺 Any advice would be greatly appreciated. (thoughts and prayers are welcome as well in these trying times 🙏 )

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sphuber](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/aiida.discourse.group/sphuber/32/6_2.png) [@sphuber](https://aiida.discourse.group/u/sphuber)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2023, 2:57pm UTC](https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206/2 "2023-12-17T14:57:38Z")

</div>

Stop the daemon. Then you can simply delete the nodes. Once the daemon starts again, any worker that receives the task associated with a deleted node will note this and just discard the task

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danielhollas](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/aiida.discourse.group/danielhollas/32/4_2.png) [@danielhollas](https://aiida.discourse.group/u/danielhollas)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2023, 10:57am UTC](https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206/3 "2023-12-23T10:57:43Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 5 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![danielhollas](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/aiida.discourse.group/danielhollas/32/4_2.png) [@danielhollas](https://aiida.discourse.group/u/danielhollas)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2023, 7:02pm UTC](https://aiida.discourse.group/t/how-to-kill-a-monster-workflow/206/4 "2023-12-23T19:02:06Z")

</div>

Thanks @sphuber! 🙇‍♂️ I am not sure what I expected, perhaps something more magical, but this indeed did the trick. 🙂

It is also really nice that I could just run `verdi node delete` on the root-level WorkChain and the whole workflow tree was deleted due to provenance rules.