killing a stuck "D" process

[nodata]

> On 7/29/05, Damian Menscher <menscher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Gaspar Bakos wrote:
>>
>> > We are trying to kill a process that is "stuck", and we have found no
>> > way to kill it yet.
>> > We tried kill with many signals, including 'kill -9', and also
>> removing
>> > forcedly the 'st' module on which this nasty tar is running.
>> >
>> > Any ideas?
>> > ------
>> > 21586 ?        D      0:14 tar tvf /dev/nst0
>> > PPid:   1
>>
>> You have three options:
>>
>> o Wait for it to finish on its own (may never happen if it's trying to
>>    access a hardware device that no longer exists).
>>
>> o Ignore it -- it's not using resources anyway.
>>
>> o Kill its parent.  In your case, the parent is init, so this is
>>    equivalent to rebooting.
>>
>> Damian Menscher
>
> What would cause a process to get so stuck that it could not be
> killed? I just want to know before I fall into that trap myself.
>
> Dotan Cohen
> http://song-lirics.com/sl/index.php
> Song Lirics
>

In this cause, probably a faulty device driver.