From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun May 19 20:28:25 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 597A95B3 for ; Sun, 19 May 2013 20:28:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jrisom@gmail.com) Received: from mail-ie0-x229.google.com (mail-ie0-x229.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4001:c03::229]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0D7F8E1 for ; Sun, 19 May 2013 20:28:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-ie0-f169.google.com with SMTP id u16so12822682iet.28 for ; Sun, 19 May 2013 13:28:24 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=VJNO3DNzH76Fh9sivvem49gKDlIVkTf2brFABl4sj18=; b=ColJEmADqUSPpQV8FKTv0b+6LmqABRVNdwg/nwOXfgjBITpuikCw3T/U2GUI/PNVqb g0ujSIa+vezN0P1jG5k2EoMv9WMQqgEZk4V6VWZzGDcm11SezMrOX7V2JV1dafZeWHcT pAIBGqr+c5qSfPBiAICCkCpt0IMfkwF5AFkreS6qHDU8mSQMJwbK4ozZbCZwz1ZYGCqr ImEakhEZ6W3c9oBs81I8sUvm6m3kT6+oEznAMHqrPcK3hod9GXwBRQi2BP/TnxsqPAjf 4HZV9Lj+Q44bV5DD8gw/7lW+hIG+mThjmPx0qbb5EwMm1YM6//QsskJg/d2GpoqG+eLC hDoA== X-Received: by 10.50.41.66 with SMTP id d2mr3509295igl.100.1368995304150; Sun, 19 May 2013 13:28:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.34] (c-98-212-197-211.hsd1.il.comcast.net. [98.212.197.211]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id qr3sm13168008igb.1.2013.05.19.13.28.22 for (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Sun, 19 May 2013 13:28:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <519935D0.5080202@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 15:28:00 -0500 From: Joshua Isom User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130328 Thunderbird/17.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unkillable processes References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 19 May 2013 20:28:25 -0000 On 5/19/2013 3:00 PM, David Demelier wrote: > Hello there, > > I've had a process on state "pfault" and it was just unkillable, kill > -9 had no effects and because the script was doing an infinite loop > the machine was slower and slower so the only way to fix that was a > reboot. > > Why kill -9 has still no effects on some bad processes? > > Regards, > > -- > Demelier David A process can be unkillable if it's holding a lock, like reading from disk. Eventually, the lock will release and it should die. You can use limits to change how much CPU and memory a process can use. My guess is what happened is it started using a lot of memory, but you ran out and have a lot of swap. It was trying to run while using your hard drive instead of ram. With limits, you should be able to prevent it from using swap which could help, and cap the amount of ram and cpu.