Process will not die

jevidl · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 5:10 pm Post subject: Process will not die

So, once there was the immortal process... and that was the problem. I have tried using top to kill the PID, as well as "Kill pid" from the command line. The process is running, has not zombied, and according to its status in top, should not be awaiting input. If anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate it.

piffle · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Jun 2004 Posts: 98

What state does top actually report? If you see a "D" then the process is in the "uninterruptible sleep" state. There is no way to kill such a process short of a reboot.

Well, I guess you could attach a kernel debugger or something and futz with the process table by hand, but. . . you get the idea.

jevidl · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 5:35 pm Post subject:

Nope. The stat is "R".

I had found another thread dealing with uninterruptable sleep, and this was not the case this time. It is really quite strange.

chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 5:36 pm Post subject:

did you try "kill -9 pid" ?

jevidl · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:42 pm Post subject:

That did the trick, although what does -9 do? man kill didn't explain too much, other than that's the signal sent with kill.

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

Kill by itself sends signal 15, SIGTERM. Kind of "please terminate". Signal 9 is SIGKILL, which is kind of "die da**it!". SIGKILL, at least on UNIX, cannot be caught or ignored.

Dave

jevidl · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:59 pm Post subject:

Thanks! :: tucks "-9, Die, no really, die" away in memory ::