Re: Dumb; help! I removed a mounted floppy

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Eric Worden <worden@eskimo.com> wrote:
>'kill -9' (or 'kill -s KILL' for the mnemonic-dependent) does not work.  
>
>I have a UNIX book that says in a footnote, "...kill may not always
>work...for instance, if the process invoked a device driver that is stuck
>waiting for a response from the device.  In that case the signal will wait
>indefinitely for recognition with no indication of what is happening."
>(Abrams, Paul W. and Bruce R. Larson, _UNIX for the Impatient, 2nd ed_, p.
>32)  This sounds like my situation all right.	
>
>One kind soul has so far sent me an alternate suggestion which I will try
>after some sleep.  It if comes to a reboot (dread!), anything to watch out
>for?  Thanks.	-Eric Worden

I suspect that your program is indeed stuck in the D state (the "blocked
on input/output" situation you describe above is indicated by a D in the
process table - ps or whatever - though often you see it temporarily and
it doesn't do any harm). In that case there's probably not a lot you can
do. The kernel panic is a little worrying, but if you're seeing no other
symptoms (and can still mount and unmount filesystems, which is usually
the first casualty) then you can probably just ignore it and go on as
normal.

You shouldn't have any problems next time you reboot, unless mounting
and unmounting has broken in which case you might have to wait for it to
do a fsck.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]