kill -9 doesnot work

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 09:03 -0400, Rodolfo Alcazar wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 18:08 +0530, Kaushal Shriyan wrote:
> > Hi ALL
> > 
> > kill -9 doesnot work
> 
> Yep. Does not always work. AFAIK, mostly happens when the kernel expects
> for a hardware signal. There are some other causes, also. Try finding
> the problem, instead of killing it!

"kill -9" will not work for processes in a "D" state (I/O wait state),
for example.  If said processes receive their I/O interrupt, they
should recognize the signal and die.

"kill" will also not kill zombies ("Z" state).  You must kill their
parent processes first and the zombies will disappear of their own
accord.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-                   Never try to outstubborn a cat.                  -
----------------------------------------------------------------------