Re: [kosuke@rustybear.com] Re: can't kill a PID
On Sun, 2002-11-03 at 12:23, Rupert wrote:
> > > Kevin Coyner told:
> > > > I always thought that with 'kill -9 PID' you could clean up just about
> > > > any process, but I've run into one that just won't go ...
> > > >
> > > > sakura:~$ ps aux |grep xmms
> > > > kosuke 9026 0.0 0.9 14460 4932 ? D 00:16 0:00 xmms
> > > > kosuke 9027 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Z 00:16 0:00 [xmms <defunct>]
> > > >
> > > > I've tried 'kill -9 9026 9027', but every time I go back and ps/grep it,
> > > > it's still there. And in the meantime, if I try to start a new xmms, it
> > > > will start a new PID in addition to 9026, but the program itself won't
> > > > show up.
> > > >
> > > > Brainwashed from too many early years in the MS world, I'm tempted to
> > > > reboot. But hoping there's a better, Linux way to clean this up.
> > >
> > > killall -9 xmms
> > >
> >
> > Just tried that, and the monster continues to live .....
> >
> > Kevin
>
> I've done something along the lines of
>
> while killall -9 xmms; echo -n .; sleep 1; done
>
> in the past, with varying success.
If kill won't work, killall and the like won't; they are merely
convenient front-ends to kill a collection of process all at once.
Sometimes a process gets stuck waiting for an event that is never going
to happen. xmms (9026), in that ps report, is in state D -
uninterruptible sleep. It's probably waiting for some kind of IO
event. Because it is uninterruptible, it never wakes up to find that it
has been killed, so it won't go away, even for a SIGKILL (kill -9).
Process 9027 is dead, but it won't go away until its parent (9026) wakes
up and cleans up; until then it is in state Z - zombie.
I think you will have to reboot the machine.
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight, UK
http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
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"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD; and the
fruit of the womb is his reward." Psalms 127:3
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