killing zombies

[David Sherman]

In article <368 at imsvax.UUCP> harris at imsvax.UUCP (Harris Reavin) writes:
>     Unfortunately no unix wizard on the net had a solution for zombie
>processes that disable ports and refuse to die from a "kill -9". I got
>mail from a number of other system administrators who had the same problem
>and asked for the solution if I found one short of rebooting. We discovered
>locally a way to drive a stake through a zombie's heart that I did not
>mention in the previous article. It is better than a reboot but is still a
>lot of trouble. We disconnect the cable from the controller of the affected
>port, change the ttys entry to turn off the port, reconnect the cable,
>and reedit the ttys file to turn the port on again. This usually works.
>I still hope that someone may come up with a better solution that does
>not involve crawling around the back of the computer in search of the
>proper cable.

I have a solution which works for us here. We have a parallel set
of devices called acu* which are the same as tty* except that DCD
need not be present to open the device. (I originally installed this
kernel mod so as to be able to cu out on a modem line which wasn't
supporting carrier detect.)

I usually find that doing a "cu -l /dev/acuNN" and out again
with ~. will clear the problem.

Dave Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
-- 
{  ihnp4!utzoo  pesnta  utcs  hcr  decvax!utcsri  }  !lsuc!dave