Re: Kernel 2.2

[Martin Lucina <mato@nz.eds.com>]

On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 03:48:38PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote:

> I have unkillable processes (state "D") that are *not* causing kernel
> panics. Is there any way to find out in which line of the kernel they
> are hanging?

This does not neccessarily indicate a problem. Processes with a state of 'D'
are generally sleeping on a device driver wait queue, so they are waiting for
some external event. Under some circumstances it is however possible for
deadlock to occur in which case you can do nothing about this (except reboot).

You can maybe get a clue on what they are waiting on by looking at 'lsof'
output or looking at the output of 'ps -lxa' (however, ps -l seems to be
unable to give me useful information in the WCHAN field on alpha, has anyone
else noticed this?).

mato