Re: many processes uninterruptibly sleeping
On Thu, 26 Sep 2002 18:47:25 +0200
martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> wrote:
> what could be the problem with a system that regularly puts quite
> a number of processes into "uninterruptible sleep" (according to top)
> for some minutes, and then releases them after a that (long) while?
> for instance, logging in to courierpop3d through port 110 allows me to
> enter user and password according to the POP3 protocol, but then
> courierpop3d goes into uninterruptible sleep for several minutes
> before acknowledging the successful authentication in the POP3 dialog.
> even a simple /bin/ls invocation gets put into 'D' status
> occassionally and will only return from that sleep after minutes of
> occupying the console (not reacting to SIGINT or SIGSUSP). the logs
> show nothing, and i can't access the machine physically to check if
> the hardware is acting up.
>
> i would appreciate any hints. this is a vital system and i am sweating
> about it.
I'm not an expert, but I've had uninterruptable processes arise because of
I/O problems. Maybe that's where to look. The most frequent for me has
been when copydir has been trying to copy an apparently corrupted file.
Deleting the file solved the problem. My uninterruptable processes always
stayed that way and only a reboot seemed to remove them.
- Richard.
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