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From: gdw@ssl-macc.co.uk (Grenville Whelan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Tu77 ate tape, then hung device.
Message-ID: <513@ssl-macc.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 17-Mar-87 04:52:44 EST
Article-I.D.: ssl-macc.513
Posted: Tue Mar 17 04:52:44 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Mar-87 05:05:24 EST
References: <1105@hoxna.UUCP>
Reply-To: gdw@ssl-macc.co.uk (Grenville Whelan)
Organization: Software Sciences Ltd, Macclesfield, UK
Lines: 30
Keywords: zombie cpio's, rmt0: cannot create

In article <1105@hoxna.UUCP> lou@hoxna.UUCP ( L. Marco ) writes:
>
>	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 ?

I've encountered similar problems on a VAX, (BSD4.2). I used "mt" to skip
n number of fields on a tape, but the tape only contained (n-1) files, so
the process ended up reading to the end of tape. As i couldn't CTRL-C from
the "mt" command, i attempted to kill the process from another terminal,
and got the same problem you did; the process wouldn't die.

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

I powered off, (and on), the tape drive, the "mt" process then exited and
everything carried on as normal.

Anyone have any ideas as to why "mt" can't be interrupted or killed while
the device is being accessed?
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