I started this process (time.php)

but I now want to stop it. It's sending hundreds of mail to my Gmail a/c. It's on a web server where I cant restart it to kill the process.

Is there a way to execute another file to kill the process, or how do I go about?

If you don't have shell access, then the only way is to ask the server administrater to kill the process.

That being said, there is an easy way to set up a script and enable it to be canceled from any other script on the same server, as follows:

I am assuming you do not have shell access either. I suspect the easiest way is to contact the administrator and have them restart Apache. They don't want this running anymore than you do.

One alternative would to attempt to kill all the Apache processes using PHP. It will send a kill signal to all Apache processes, except the one it is running under. This might work if the Apache process running under a shared process without setuid(). Attempt at your own risk.

The following will stop the background process(PHP):

To start apache again:

To simply re-start apache: