Re: Can't restart certain crashed applications without rebooting (in this case Noatun)
Hmm, as is too often the case, after sending an email seeking, I start
to get some other clues--I found a suggestion to restart arts--I tried
that, still no luck so I'm still looking for help (but maybe I have
some kind of clue now).
Randy Kramer
On Monday 21 June 2010 09:38:55 am Randy Kramer wrote:
> Sorry this is so long--maybe I can summarize the problem here, then
> you can go on and read the background and a more detailed explanation
> of the problem:
>
> Sometimes after a program hangs (in this case noatun), I have trouble
> restarting it without rebooting my entire system. I do look for all
> the processes associated with the application (noatun, using ps -Al |
> grep noatun) and kill them, with either kill -9 or kill -15, but
> afterwards, when I try to start the application, I just get a
> spinning hourglass indication in the taskbox (on the taskbar) and a
> small bouncing blue ball elsewhere on the screen, both of which
> eventually disappear without having started the application.
>
> Hmm, maybe with that you don't even need the Background and Problem
> listed below. I've tried googling, but don't really have a good clue
> for what to google.
>
> A dead end (I think):
>
> Oh, wait, I might have a clue: now I try to start noatun in a
> terminal (with & or without) and I very quickly (sometimes) get exit
> 255--hmm, on the next try I didn't get the exit 255--what does exit
> 255 mean?:
>
> rhk@s17:~$ noatun &
> [2] 11248
> [1] Exit 255 noatun
> rhk@s17:~$
>
> Well, I haven't found out what exit 255 means, but I don't think it
> matters, it doesn't consistently happen, just sometimes.
>
> Background:
>
> This is surely not a Debian specific question, but I'll try asking
> here to see if anyone can give me one or more hints--I've tried to do
> some googling, but really don't have a good clue for what to google.
>
> I've had the same thing happen for applications besides Noatun (iirc)
> (and on Linuxes that I used before installing Debian 5.0), but
> because the current problem is Noatun, I'll mention Noatun in this
> example.
>
> I was running Noatun and it hung. It may have been something I
> did--specifically, at the time it hung, I had the playlist up and was
> unchecking checkboxes on the playlist.
>
> In an effort to restart noatun, I looked (using ps -Al | grep noatun)
> for all noatun processes and killed them with (the first time)
> kill -9. Later (on subsequent attempts), I tried kill -15.
>
> Either one wipes out all the processes with noatun in the name.
>
> The problem:
>
> Here's the problem: when I go to restart noatun, it won't restart.
> On the taskbar (is that the right name in KDE) I see a task labeled
> noatun seemingly attempt to start--I see an hourglass spinning, and
> elsewhere on my screen I see some sort of small bouncing blue ball,
> but after 15 seconds or so, both disappear and noatun hasn't
> restarted. If I go look at the processes using ps -Al | grep noatun,
> I find something like the following:
>
> s17:~# ps -Al | grep noatun
> 1 S 1000 11039 3039 0 80 0 - 8589 - ? 00:00:00
> noatun 1 S 1000 11040 11039 0 80 0 - 9670 - ?
> 00:00:00 noatun 1 S 1000 11141 3039 0 80 0 - 8589 - ?
> 00:00:00 noatun 1 Z 1000 11142 11141 0 80 0 - 0 - ?
> 00:00:00 noatun <defunct>
> s17:~#
>
> If I wipe those out (using kill -9 or kill -15), they disappear, but
> when I try to noatun again I get the same result.
>
> In the past, the only way I found to recover from a situation like
> this was to reboot. (Potentially just restarting KDE might also
> solve the problem, but from my point of view, restarting KDE is as
> drastic a solution as rebooting, so when I think about restarting KDE
> I just go ahead and do a (cold) reboot with the hope of cleaning up
> any other possible "garbage" that might be floating around in my
> system.)
>
> I see that the one process is a Zombie. I've googled on things like
> zombie, process, noatun, restart, and combinations thereof--even a
> good suggestion on appropriate search terms might get me started here
> (of course, a nice clear explanation and course of action would be
> nicer).
>
> Thanks!
> Randy Kramer
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