William T Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, brian moore wrote: > >> > does the process list "Z" under STAT ? if it is the process has gone >> > zombied and i don't think there is much you can do. sometimes zombie'd >> > processes die on their own eventually many times they will not die until >> > you reboot .. >> >> Not quite true... zombies don't ever die: they're already dead. > >While the description of zombie processes is accurate, I think another >likely situation is that the process is in "uninterruptible sleep," i.e. >the 'D' state. This happens when a process is blocked in a system call - >it will be 'D' until the kernel function returns. Kernel bugs, hardware >problems, and dead NFS mounts can cause these kernel functions to take >a long time or forever.
A hint for NFS: mount your NFS filesystems with the '-o intr' mount option. That way you'll be able to interrupt system calls related to them. -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
