Can't kill process

[David Wolfskill]

>Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 18:19:38 +0100 (CET)
>From: Michael Sig Birkmose <michael at gisp.dk>
>To: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
>Subject: Can't kill process
>Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org

>I am currently running FreeBSD 4.9, and I have a user who somehow managed
>to get some dead bash processes. I have repeatedly attempted to kill -9
>this process without any luck. The way I understood it was that kill -9 was an
>"offer that the process can't refuce" :) I.e. that the process would be
>terminated no matter wat by the OS?

>...

>Does anyone have an idea of what I have to do, in order to kill the
>proces?

If a process doesn't get any CPU time at all, it's difficult to do
anything at all with it, including making it exit.  This can be an
issue, e.g., for a process that had opened a file on an NFS-mounted
file system, then the NFS server goes away.  A subsequent read()
by the process in question will show up with a "D" under "STAT" in
the output of "ps".

It's rather disruptive, but a reboot may be required to actually get rid
of the process entirely.

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
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