*BSD News Article 54829


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From: rsww@quanta.com (Ross S. W. Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Non dying process. Serious?
Date: 10 Nov 1995 08:39:26 GMT
Organization: Quanta Communications, Inc.
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Mikhail Teterin (mi@bu.edu) wrote:
: For a while I had the idea that `kill -9' must kill -- it is a signal
: handled by the OS, not by process. Well, ppp will not die. The way to achieve
: that is simple -- specify wrong memory address for the COM-port of
: interest. In my case, kerenl did not detect my mistake, reporting presence of
: the COM port. Then ppp told be "dial failed" and refused to exit. -9
: did not help. Similar thing was happening to pppd until I figured out
: the proper settings.

: Now, I perfectly understand, that it was my mistake, but the fact, that
: I can not kill a process bothers me....

Ahhh, you have met the zombie process. A nice critter that hangs out
sometimes not doing anything but taking up swap space sometimes using
up tons of CPU cycles trying to get that interrupt that it shal never
get. Oh well maybe it'll die by itself, but a reboot is sometimes the
only way to rid the machine of these creatures of the dark.

Cheers,

Ross Walker

--
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|  /\/   | Ross S. W. Walker (rsww@quanta.com)
|  \/\   |
| |   |\ | finger rsww@quanta.com for PGP key    _____________________________
| |___|/ |                                      |  Quanta Communications, Inc.
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