svn commit: r205806 - stable/8/etc

[Jilles Tjoelker]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 04:10:38PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> On 03/28/10 14:06, Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 01:28:42PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> >> Probably my fault for not saying something sooner, but there is a
> >> problem with the code in head that sometimes causes it to loop
> >> repeatedly even though pwait exits successfully. I am trying to track it
> >> down, but since it only happens about once every 10 shutdowns it's been
> >> difficult.

> > There is a difference between the two methods in what is waited for
> > exactly. pwait(1) will wait for the process to terminate; if it is
> > applied to a zombie it will return immediately (printing the exit status
> > if -v was given). On the other hand, kill(1) will continue to return
> > success until the process has been waited for by its parent.

> The process that I see this with most often is devd, does that fit the
> model you're describing?

Possibly. This would mainly happen because init has been busy, I think
(or if the parent isn't init).

> What are the implications of moving on after a
> successful pwait even though there is still a zombie process?

For shutdown/stop, nothing.

For restart, there may be problems if a restarted daemon checks the
validity of the pid in the pidfile using kill().

> > An obvious fix is to trust pwait if it returns successfully, e.g. like
> > if pwait $_list 2>/dev/null; then break; else sleep 2; fi

> It can't be break, the point of the loop is that wait_for_pids() takes a
> list. We may be able to use continue however.

pwait with a list waits until all of the processes have terminated.

-- 
Jilles Tjoelker