Unkillable processes?

[Paul Lussier]

Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> writes:

> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:36:01 -0500
> aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net wrote:
>
>> 
>> When I encounter processes which are unresponsive to kill -9, I find that
>> this generally works:
>> 
>>   runlevel # say the current runlevel is 3
>>   telinit 1
>>   telinit 3
> This will almost always work, especially with zombie processes. 
> What you are doing is transitioning into single-user mode. 

Ahm yeah, that's not usually an option on a production server :)

> Then of course going to run level 6 tends to cure all ills :-)

Yes, yes it does.  I usually try to find what the problem is using ps
and lsof and a variety of other tricks to fix things before trying
runlevel 6.  On a production system, it's sometimes better to just
leave the system alone and wait if it's not causing any major
problems, as a reboot is often more disruptive than anything else.
-- 

Seeya,
Paul