[techtalk] Is there a Kill -8, too?

[Nils Philippsen]

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Just This Girl wrote:

> I'm afraid I don't really know the answer to that one. I've never had a
> kill -9 *not* work on a pid.

There are situations where a kill -9 won't work, e.g. when the process to
be killed currently is in a system call (it's process state 'D' aka
'uninterruptible sleep' with ps or top). The process will be killed as
soon as it returns from the system call. If it doesn't, there's the
Windows solution: reboot the machine :-)

> 
> Jane Susi wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > > > Just This Girl wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Did you try 'kill pid' or 'kill -9 pid'? 'kill -9' should bring down
> > > > > anything.
> > 
> > I'm sorry, if I bother you with a really silly question, but...what shall I do,
> > if this "kill -9" just does'nt work? Not very long time ago it just happened,
> > so what to do for avoiding such situation??

Nils
-- 
Nils Philippsen / Vogelsangstrasse 115 / D-70197 Stuttgart / +49.711.6599405
nils at wombat.dialup.fht-esslingen.de / nils at fht-esslingen.de / nils at redhat.de
   The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
   regarded as a criminal offence.                  -- Edsger W. Dijkstra


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