Another way to kill a process?

aleks04 · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 13

I have been updating the system and left it running over night. Next day I see it stuck on merging samba. So I ^C the current process and everything seems fine. But for some reason there still is a [sh] process that is still running from that emerge and is taking up 99.9% of the CPU.

I have tried to `kill -9` the process but it's still running...

hds · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:24 pm Post subject:

this is probably a child process of something else, so you cant kill it that way.
try "ps ax | grep sh" and see what gives. you would have to kill the "mother" of the sh process.

DaveArb · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2004 Posts: 510 Location: Texas, USA

aleks04 · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 13

Kill -9 doesn't work no matter what I do, and this process is using 99.9% of the CPU so it's running and it's not a zombie process...

hds · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:31 pm Post subject:

Monkeywrench · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:42 pm Post subject:

Doesn't seem to be a zombie at all. Here's the Process State Codes from the ps man page:

DaveArb · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2004 Posts: 510 Location: Texas, USA

aleks04 · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 13

Don't want to reboot it... atleast just yet... if I don't find a solution then I guess I will have to.

Did a little research on the subject and other things and found this:

The process is executing in the kernel mode and is running, but in kernel mode no signals get to the process so ofcourse it can't receive the TERM or STOP or any other signal.

Also I see that the process was using some files:

codeslave · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 5 Location: Boston, MA

I had a similar issue trying to kill a java process in HPUX, about 2 weeks ago. The process was hung, but not a zombie, and top was listing it at 100% CPU usage (though it didnt seem to be consuming any CPU in actuality). Kill -9 with superuser did nothing, etc. etc.

After much digging, we think we figured out what happened: The process was stuck waiting for an I/O operation to complete, but that had died unexpectedly, so our process was indefinitely waiting for something that would never come.

Sending the kill was never seen by the process, since the I/O operation must complete before continuing execution.

The only way we could get the process to die was to shutdown -r the machine.

/cs

madmango · Guru Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 507 Location: PA, USA

I get this stuff ALL THE TIME when I'm dealing with usb drives. It sucks.

Is it the intention of the kernel people for a process to not be able to die during an IO operation?
_________________
word.

Yann|ck · n00b Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 4

I'm also having this problem on a mail server box.

top shows:

nbensa · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:42 am Post subject:

/me badly wants a kernel patch to kill D state process :evil:

sfroe · n00b Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 18

how about a good ol kill -15 ???
it might just work. that way it can try to stop the IO operation instead of killing the process and the IO operation taking over and stopping the -9.

zeek · Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 7:25 am Post subject:

In situations like this, take a minute to remember all the linux nuthuggers and fanbois droning on and on about the stability of linux and the instability of windows. It goes to show that even linux has its problems sometimes.

Reboot to get rid of the process(es).

AdShea · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 62

I had a bunch of nasty sh processes, logging out the user who started them helped for me. But if they're root processes, that may not work so well.-

sundialsvc4 · Guru Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 436

tnt · Veteran Joined: 27 Feb 2004 Posts: 1227

I'm getting more and more "defunct" processes.