Re: killing old netscapes
On 15 Oct 2000, Matthew Emmett wrote:
> ... I haven't figured
> out a recreatable way to get netscape to crash (any pointers on how to
> do so would be appreciated),...
Netscape goes into a tight, infinite and load crushing loop when it is trying to
access data from a remote Web site and the data it is expecting does not
come back for one reason or another. It may be because your ppp connection
died or for some reason the remote site is not sending the data. A Netscape
in this loop will not allow you to communicate with it by clicking on its
'Stop' button or any other control. Such a process must usually be dealt with
using 'kill -s 9 PID' or it will eventually hog all your system resources
and force you to reboot. Sometimes you can get it to stop and take an
exception exit by killing your pppd.
> so I can't test out my idea, but here is
> my idea so far:
>
> $ ps -o pid,ppid,cmd | grep "dns helper"
>
> tells me the pid and ppid of any "dns helper" netscape processes (and
> grep, but I'll filter that out). Next, I take all but the largest pid
> and kill it. This way, if the user's netscape died and they start a
> new one right away, my script will only kill those dead-chicken
> netscape's. Does this sound like it will work reliably?
I can't say. If this is mission-critical to your business, I would suggest
opening a communication with the Mozilla and Netscape developers. An
infinite loop like this can easily be given a timeout and allow the
'Stop' event and other navigation events to take place. It is a piece of
shoddy and amateurish programming that is a disgrace to the profession.
Dwight
--
Dwight Johnson
dwj@aaronsrod.com
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