On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 04:06:01PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:32:11 +0200 > Linas Zvirblis <0x0007@gmail.com> wrote: > > > By the way, there is no such thing as unkillable, "killall -9 > > mc" and "killall -9 acroread" should get rid of them. > > I have lately encountered processes that don't respond to -9. I think it was an automount process. Regardless, what's up with that? Is there any other way to kill processes that don't respond to -9 (aside from of course, the dreaded reboot...)? > Yes, such a thing exists: Processes that get locked up in kernel I/O. They will show up in 'ps' output with state 'D', and won't respond to _anything_ until the kernel function returns - and if the hardware itself is locked up, all you can do is reboot. Scsi tapes are infamous for doing such things, and NFS is, depending on the mount options used, very good at doing the same. (Btw: 'ps' can show you in which function the process is blocking - that's the WCHAN column.) Regards, Jan -- Jan C. Nordholz <jckn At gmx net>
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