William T Wilson wrote: > > On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, brian moore wrote: > > > > does the process list "Z" under STAT ? if it is the process has gone > > > > 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. >
Thanks to everyone for the help. It turns out the processes are indeed in "uninterruptible sleep" (or 'D' under STAT). And, as suggested, I believe it is due to a failed NFS mount. I will heed Colin Watson's instruction to mount these with the '-o intr' option and see if that helps. Thanks again! -- Brian J. Stults Doctoral Candidate Department of Sociology University at Albany - SUNY Phone: (518) 442-4652 Fax: (518) 442-4936 Web: http://www.albany.edu/~bs7452
