Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!ima!cfisun!lakart!dg
From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: when does kill -9 pid not work?
Message-ID: <650@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 9 Aug 89 14:43:10 GMT
References: <4914@ptsfa.PacBell.COM>
Organization: Lakart Corporation, Newton, MA
Lines: 14

dmt@PacBell.COM (Dave Turner) sez:
> In article <9748@alice.UUCP> debra@alice.UUCP () writes:
>>when the process exits (due to the kill -9) it may get stuck in a device
>>driver or something, so it enters a "zombie" state. This means that the
>>process is busy exiting, but hasn't quite gone far enough to tell init that
>>it's really gone.
> 
> There are times when a process cannot be killed and does not enter the
> zombie state. It will not use cpu time and will live (in a coma) until
> the system is rebooted. I have seen this on other systems besides 3B20s.

Also processes that have exited & not been waited for: "<defunct>" can't
be removed with a kill -9. As Chris Torek, or Doug Gwyn, or someone said:
"There's no point shooting a corpse - it's already dead"
-- 
	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
						IHS	| +-+-+
	....... !harvard!xait!lakart!dg			+-+-+ |
AKA:	dg%lakart.uucp@xait.xerox.com		  	  +---+