Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!homxb!houxm!hoxna!lou
From: lou@hoxna.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Tu77 ate tape, then hung device.
Message-ID: <1105@hoxna.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Mar-87 16:47:39 EST
Article-I.D.: hoxna.1105
Posted: Fri Mar 13 16:47:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Mar-87 11:32:47 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel,N.J
Lines: 21
Keywords: zombie cpio's, rmt0: cannot create


	I have a backup that runs every night by itself.  Last
night the drive ate the tape, stalling the reel half-way through.
When I showed up in the morning, I cleared the mess out of the drive,
&& restarted the backup, but I couldn't create /dev/rmt0 .

	I looked around, and the original cpio was still running, so
I did kill -9 20279. No problem, right ?  Funny thing is, the process
was still alive.  I could 'kill -9' it all I wanted, and it wouldn't
die.  I killed the parent, && eventually it was adopted by init, 
(ppid was 1 ), but I *still* couldn't touch it.  And of course, *that* 
process was still using /dev/rmt0, so I couldn't access the device.....  
Anyone have any idea what happened ? Am I even right in assuming that 
this 'immortal' cpio was stopping me from writing to the device ?

It's a 780 running 5.2, TU77 drive.  I finally re-booted, && the problem
went away.  Anything less drastic I could have done ?

                                                     lou @ hoxna

ps - No, the backup procedure doesn't catch any signals.