"Unkillable" processes

[Jonathan I. Kamens]

In article <1991Apr20.145633.5639 at odbffm.incom.de> oli at odbffm.incom.de (Oliver Boehmer) writes:
   A kill -9 xxx only has the effect, that the PPID changes to init, and after
   this any kill -9 is ignored.

The problem is that the process is hung inside a device driver inside
the kernel, ignoring signals.  This usually indicates a somewhat badly
written device driver -- the author of the device driver decided that
some condition was urgent enough and would go by quickly enough that
the device driver could hang the process while waiting for it to
complete, and the author was wrong. :-)

   Why? How can I get rid of these processes w/o shutting down the system?

Well, check to see if the device (i.e. the hardware device -- tape
drive or whatever) the process is accessing is offline or something --
that may be what the device driver is waiting on.  If it isn't, try
taking it offline and putting it back online :-).

If that doesn't work, then you can adb the running kernel (if you have
adb) and fiddle with the process to get the device driver to
relinquish its hold on the process.  Unless you are very good at
mucking with running kernels, this is probably a bad idea.

If fiddling with the device doesn't work, and you can't/won't fiddle
with the kernel, then rebooting is usually your only alternative.

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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