How to kill a process

[Victor_5]

I have a NFS process hanging on the system, I am trying to kill it

fuser -cuk /usr/NFS
kill -9 24129
kill -15 24129
kill -24 24129
kill -25 24129
Unfortunately, all of them failed.

Why and how?

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Shawn:

If a process is waiting on I/O, for instance, then even a 'kill -9' will not work. The process must be allowed to run (again) before it can die (be killed).

...JRF...

[Victor_5]

Hi James:

How to let the process run again?

[Kevin Wright]

do a ps -elf and check the PRI of the process. it it between 128-153, you cannot send signals to the process until it finishes..in your case, you will probably have to reboot.

[Victor_5]

Hi James:

In my case, the PRI is 148, however, I can not reboot my box only because of a process, any other ideas?

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

No solution. Reboot is the only way.

Reported to HP and waiting for patch.

Bad luck.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Shawn:

As already said, I think your stuck! Sorry.

...JRF...

[Jack Werner]

To all who have participated in this dialogue. The Unix "kill" command is named inappropriately. It should be called "mother-may-I"(ie "kill you"). This has been a shortcoming of Unix since its conception. As long as the intended victim(process) is willing(ie not waiting for some event other than a SIG to be posted) to be killed, you may do so. However, if the intended victim is waiting for some event(other than a SIG event) to complete, he/she cannot be killed. This is a design deficiency of Unix. To have to reboot to clear this situation is PC mentality. There is absolutely no reason that Unix couldnot support multiple-waits, and by default a SIG-wait could be included with every explicit wait. A SIG could then awake any process that had issued a wait and KILL the process.