From owner-freebsd-current Sun Jul 25 1: 4: 5 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26828150A6 for ; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 01:04:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id RAA11332; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:31:38 +0930 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id RAA51701; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:31:33 +0930 (CST) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:31:32 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Kevin Day Cc: kkenn@rebel.net.au, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Unkillable processes Message-ID: <19990725173132.E51019@freebie.lemis.com> References: <19990725154108.A51019@freebie.lemis.com> <199907250621.BAA55777@celery.dragondata.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: <199907250621.BAA55777@celery.dragondata.com>; from Kevin Day on Sun, Jul 25, 1999 at 01:21:03AM -0500 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sunday, 25 July 1999 at 1:21:03 -0500, Kevin Day wrote: >> On Saturday, 24 July 1999 at 20:51:37 -0500, Kevin Day wrote: >>>> On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Kevin Day wrote: >>>> >>>>> For one, do another 'ps' with the 'l' option, so you can see what it's stuck >>>>> on. >>>> >>>> UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND >>>> 1000 1103 1086 29 75 20 5740 384 - TWN ?? 0:00.00 (kvt) >>>> 1000 1109 1103 0 4 0 1504 0 ttywri IWs+ p1 0:00.00 (tcsh) >>>> >>>> 1000 92724 1086 279 105 20 5736 356 - RN ?? 139:40.13 kvt -T Termi >>>> 1000 92743 92724 2 18 0 1576 0 pause IWs p8 0:00.00 (tcsh) >>>> >>> Well, since the CPU time in the active process (92724) went up since your >>> last e-mail, and it's in the RUN state (a - in the WCHAN and a R in the >>> STAT), it looks like the process is just spinning, eating CPU. >> >> Right. >> >>> The tcsh listed below that is a zombie of the running kvt. >> >> There aren't any zombies here. >> >> It's a child of the kvt. It's not a zombie. Take a look at the STAT >> field (and ps(1)): process > > Good point, i didn't notice that, i saw the ()'s from his first message, They mean that ps can't access the command line information, for example because the process has been swapped. >> Process 92724 is runnable, nice and running (no WCHAN). I really >> don't understand why you can't stop this one. > > The only time I've seen this is when my console is getting flooded with > 'vm_fault: pager error' messages for that process. Otherwise, there's no > reason why a running process can't be killed, correct? No. You can't kill a process which is in kernel mode. If it doesn't come out, you won't be able to stop it. It seems rather unlikely that that's the case here, though. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message