Trouble killing processes in SysV/AT

[Ken Keirnan]

In article <3951 at killer.UUCP> wnp at killer.UUCP (Wolf Paul) writes:
>Can anyone enlighten me as to what causes a process to become "immortal"
>in System VR2,  or Microport UNIX System V/AT, to be more specific?
>
>I have encountered this a number of times, where it would be impossible
>even for root to kill a process; if the parent process of the "immortal"
>process is killed, the child attaches itself to init, PID 1.
>


The only processes (I can think of) that cannot be killed, even with
signal 9, are *DEFUNCT* processes and processes suspended waiting on I/O.
Since the above case is evidently not a DEFUNCT, I would suspect an I/O
problem.  Since there was no mention of what the process is doing, its
tough to determine.  Is the process a hung getty?  How about a little more
info.

					Ken Keirnan
-- 

Ken Keirnan - Pacific Bell - {att,bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!pbhyf!kjk
  San Ramon, California	                    kjk at pbhyf.PacBell.COM