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

[Mike Burger]

> On 13Sep2011 10:14, m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> | sunhux G wrote:
> | <snip>
> | <snip>
> | > # lsof -a -p 7892
> | > < above command just pauses/hangs there;  it's been over 2 hrs already
> >
> | >
> | > # strace -p7892
> | > Process 7892 attached - interrupt to quit
> | >  < it pauses there & Ctrl-C did not yield any response >
> | > (have to do 'pkill -9 strace' to exit it)
> | <snip>
> | As a side note, did you try <crtl-D>?
> |         mark
>
> Sigh. Whatever for? At least ctrl-C sends SIGINT. ctlr-D just flushes
> the input stream, generating a zero length read if the stream is already
> flushed, and a zero length read means EOF. But the program has to be
> running
> _and_ reading its input to notice this.
>
> In short, if "kill -9" doesn't get you anywhere, ctrl-D doesn't even
> make into the waste of time category because it is not even a signal.

I haven't followed this thread, so I apologize if this answer has already
been given.

If you have a process that is stuck in a zombie mode and kill -9 isn't
getting rid of it, you may need to do something with the parent process
that spawned it in the first place.

Often, child processes will hang around for no apparent reason, until the
parent process has ended.

ps -ef | grep <PID> or ps -eaf | grep <PID> will give you the parent
process ID as well as the current PID.  The parent process ID is in the
third column, as shown here:

$ ps -eaf | grep sshd
root      3979     1  0 Aug27 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root     10872  3979  0 08:09 ?        00:00:00 sshd: XXXXXX [priv]
XXXXXX   10874 10872  0 08:09 ?        00:00:00 sshd: XXXXXX at pts/0


First column: Process owner
Second column: PID of the sshd process(es)
Third column: PID of the process that spawned sshd

So, if my pts/0 shell won't go away, with PID 10874, the parent process
would be PID 10872. You could kill that process, and PID 10874 should end
along with it.

-- 
Mike Burger
http://www.bubbanfriends.org

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