From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Gg41k-0003kd-9p for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:44:28 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id kA3Ig779018130; Fri, 3 Nov 2006 18:42:07 GMT Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com (nf-out-0910.google.com [64.233.182.185]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id kA3Id5ow001150 for ; Fri, 3 Nov 2006 18:39:05 GMT Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id a4so248769nfc for ; Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:39:05 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:sender:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references:x-google-sender-auth; b=UhMQGxGIvMg5BRKpozIY1eaW4+3l3XKLiQZ1VSZq2W3TIcBk5S7K3MpXtzIpW5ZJMKbOAyebeeUWRrmBqIpY9UgYpfejcaQ6qo4Wq0T9ly8dSfGxocnXyjv3SPuXaZRSWMZldn12QBgNlCiDc8Bq/iqFMGeSeVNke/q5Zfd5GJE= Received: by 10.82.190.2 with SMTP id n2mr863467buf.1162579144835; Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:39:04 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.106.3 with HTTP; Fri, 3 Nov 2006 10:39:04 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <7573e9640611031039t3856901emb22746bc06d6c45f@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 11:39:04 -0700 From: "Richard Fish" Sender: richard.j.fish@gmail.com To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Die, process! Die! In-Reply-To: <200611030909.32572.alan@linuxholdings.co.za> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <1162220472.12354.70.camel@camille.espersunited.com> <7573e9640610301848o29169fa1mf797531bbc9e7e8d@mail.gmail.com> <20061103044403.GB22331@waltdnes.org> <200611030909.32572.alan@linuxholdings.co.za> X-Google-Sender-Auth: 76eeadd2ee0dd4d6 X-Archives-Salt: b83eeab5-a628-40af-8380-6e30dc4232c2 X-Archives-Hash: 10d219f2664124b9ce688ffa455937be On 11/3/06, Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Friday 03 November 2006 06:44, Walter Dnes wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 07:48:58PM -0700, Richard Fish wrote > > > > > If -9 doesn't work, it means your kernel is hungup, and yeah, > > > you'll have to reboot to fix. > > > > Where does kill -15 fit in? > > signal 15 is SIGTERM, and the default for kill. The thread is about > unkillable processes, meaning those that don't go away with kill or > kill -15 Just to expand on this a bit... SIGTERM can be caught, blocked, or ignored by a process. It is basically asking the _process_ to "quit now!". SIGKILL cannot be caught, blocked, or ignored by a process. In fact, no user-space code is even executed for SIGKILL. It is basically a request to the kernel to "wipe this thing from memory!". So if SIGKILL doesn't work, that usually means that the process has allocated some resource in the kernel that now cannot be freed. An example would be files open on an NFS server (mounted with the 'hard' option), with dirty buffers needing to be flushed, but the NFS server cannot be reached. SIGKILL would attempt to close those files, which would attempt to flush out those buffers, which would not work. Another example would be a buggy driver and a hung device (seen this with ipw3945d on my own system!) -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list