[plug] unkillable proces

[William Kenworthy]

I niced it down ok.

1 R root      7043     1 86  99  19 -   841 -      Jul29 ?
1-15:46:54 /bin/sh ../libtool --mode=compile --tag=CC
i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I.. -I.
-I/usr/include -D

Was running in a screen session (since killed).  Its parent pid has gone
to 1.  The job was a compiling some updates to the system and it seems
to have gone into a loop.

Status is "RN"

Reboots not a drama (uptime=21days) and I should boot into the new
kernel I built in any case.  The long term job is john so I can recover
that with no problems.  Just that the exercise of killing something like
this is interesting in itself.

BillK


On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 12:44 +0800, Bernard Blackham wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2005 at 11:33:10AM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > I have an unkillable process using all spare cpu cycles.  It just shrugs
> > off kill -9 ...
> 
> What state does ps show it as being in? If it's a zombie (Z), then
> it shouldn't be chewing up CPUs. Zombies come about because their
> parents don't clean up properly. If its parent dies, it should
> disappear too. If it's in the D state, it's stuck talking to the
> kernel, and "ps -o wchan <pid>" will tell you whereabouts.
> strace'ing it may provide some more information too. It might be
> waiting on a network filesystem that disappeared, but again,
> shouldn't be sucking 100% CPU.
> 
> Also, if it's a kernel thread, then there's probably no hope without
> a reboot, unless the kernel thread is linked to something (eg, a
> network driver), in which case cycling the
> interface/filesystem/whatever, and maybe unloading/reloading the
> module may help.
> 
> You may be able to just stop it in its tracks by sending a SIGSTOP.
> 
> > Is there anyway to kill it or is it reboot?  Its not a drama except some
> > long running jobs (weeks) are running at -19 and are not getting a look
> > in.
> 
> What kind of jobs are they? Could they be saved with cryopid[1]? If
> not, let me know and I'll see what I can do :)
> 
> Bernard.
> 
> [1] http://cryopid.berlios.de/
> 
-- 
William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au>
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