kill -9

[Sandy_35]

I have a stubborn process that will not die. Tried kill -9 PID as root and it still lives. Any tips on killing something like this? I can't reboot the system as a solution.

Thanks!

[Pete Randall]

Sandy,

Most likely the process is waiting for the completion of an I/O request and will be un-signalable (translated: unkillable) until the I/O request does complete. The only solution other than reboot is to figure out a way to satisfy the I/O request. Perhaps you can figure out what it's waiting on by using fuser or lsof and then formulate some method of supplying what it's looking for. Other than that, it's reboot time.


Pete

[Steve Steel]

Hi

Unforunately this seems a true zombie stuck on something where it does not see the traps

Then it is a reboot or nothing


signum signame Name Description
___________________________________________________________________________
0 SIGNULL Null Check access to pid
1 SIGHUP Hangup Terminate; can be trapped
2 SIGINT Interrupt Terminate; can be trapped
3 SIGQUIT Quit Terminate with core dump; can be trapped
9 SIGKILL Kill Forced termination; cannot be trapped
15 SIGTERM Terminate Terminate; can be trapped
24 SIGSTOP Stop Pause the process; cannot be trapped
25 SIGTSTP Terminal stop Pause the process; can be trapped
26 SIGCONT Continue Run a stopped process


Signal 9 cannot be trapped so the process is stuck
and you must reboot

Steve STeel

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
What message do you get after the kill if any?
nothing like "process doesnt exist..."
Can you kill the process with the parent process?

All the best
Victor

[Deoncia Grayson_1]

Since the kill -9 option doesn't work, then the process will not go away until a reboot occors.

You can also check this link, for more reasons why this process won't die:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=706899

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If the process is waiting on a higher priority event (such as I/O) then it will not respond to your signal. If the process is a zombie then it's already dead and can't be killed. If its a zombie it's only occuppying a slot in the process table and consuming no other resourses so it's not a problem. If it''s waiting on i/o then you really have to disable the devive. For example, a dd writing to a tape device might hang and result in your situation. In that case, manually ejecting the tape will solve the problem. Without knowing more about your process (eg ps -f), it's difficult to be more specific.

[Sandy_35]

Thanks for your help. Looks like we will have to reboot..

Sandy