Sending all processes the TERM signal hang on reboot - solution

[Jamie Tatum <jamie.tatum@veritas.com>]

There were a few messages on an issue people were experiencing with a hang
on reboot.  The hang occurs when the sendsigs script runs.  I ran into this
issue and found a cause, at least on a system here.  I'm running Debian
Sarge on an older Compaq Proliant PIII server (6400R).  When hotplug starts,
it loads a number of modules including cpqphp.  Cpqphp starts an event
handling process listed as phpd_event.  Sending sigterm to this process
hangs the system.   

2370 ?        S      0:00 [phpd_event]

There is a note about this in a patch which may or may not have been applied
to the current Sarge kernel:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/pci-hotplug/2.4/pci_hp-
cpqphp-2.4.28-pre1.patch

In any case, this issue can be worked around by appending cpqphp to
/etc/hotplug/blacklist:

# echo cpqphp >> /etc/hotplug/blacklist

This will prevent the module from being loaded at bootup.  For the current
session, the module can be unloaded manually so the next reboot will be
clean:

# rmmod cpqphp

Hope this helps!

~J