Options to stop processes that can't be killed -9 other than reboot

[Yong Huang]

> | If "kill -9 pid" doesn't work, would killall work?
> 
> Of course not.
> 
> Basicly, if kill -9 doesn't remove the process, it is
> wedged on some
> kernel level resource. When that comes good the process
> will exit but
> not before.
> 
> Does "lsof -p 25618" (adjust for whatever PID) tell you
> anything useful
> about the hung process? Is the tape drive ok? Does the
> command "strace
> -p 25618" (again, adjust) tell you what function call is in
> progress,
> and what it is accessing? Probably the tape drive, but
> check out the
> system call file descriptor against those shown by lsof.
> -- 
> Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>

Indeed no OS command can "kill" a process that kill -9 cannot "kill". 
But if the process is associated with some hardware, you can try doing 
something on it. For instance, pulling a cable may fire a trigger 
inside the device driver and wake up the stuck process from the kernel 
space.

Yong Huang