From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 31 9: 6: 1 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de [139.174.243.252]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 43BF014C56 for ; Fri, 31 Dec 1999 09:05:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA09959 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 31 Dec 1999 18:05:56 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from olli) Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 18:05:56 +0100 (CET) From: Oliver Fromme Message-Id: <199912311705.SAA09959@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Unkillable process Organization: Administration TU Clausthal Reply-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 RZTUC(3) PL2] Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG keith@mail.telestream.com wrote in list.freebsd-questions: > How in the heck can I kill a process that does not respond to a kill -9? > I've got a remote machine that has a hung mt process up and I need to > get to that tape device. The process is in the "iowait" state. Such a process does not receive any signals, because it is blocked on I/O and it is not scheduled for CPU. This is usually an indication of a hardware problem (i.e. with your tape drive). > # kill -9 5959 > # > > No error at all. :-/ Of course kill doesn't report an error, because it successfully added a SIGKILL to the queue (or mask) of signals pending for reception by that process. You first have to solve the hardware problem, so that the process is not blocked anymore. Then it will disappear. This should be in the FAQ... Regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany (Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) "In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt" (Terry Pratchett) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message