Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!usc!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: can't kill some processes under SunOS
Message-ID: <11669@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 22 Nov 89 22:04:50 GMT
References: <3046@bayes.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 7

In article <3046@bayes.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov> kthompso@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (Kevin Thompson) writes:
>Under what conditions does kill -9 not kill a process?

When they're sleeping (in the KERNEL) with priority less than P_ZERO.
Many device drivers do not time out when an operation blocks forever;
I consider that a bug in those device drivers, although I understand
why they tend to be written that way.