Re: tlug: Uninterruptible sleeping processes

["Andrew S. Howell" <andy@example.com>]

>>>>> "Neil" == Neil Booth <NeilB@example.com> writes:

    Neil> The other day, I had a couple of these. They were caused by
    Neil> Netscape accessing my floppy drive, and anyway something
    Neil> went wrong and Netscape was just waiting.

    Neil> So I went to bash, and did a "cd /mnt/floppy" (I think) and
    Neil> bash hanged as well waiting for the floppy.

    Neil> Try as I might, I couldn't kill the netscape and bash
    Neil> processes, as they were uninterruptible. Kill -9 didn't work
    Neil> as root either. Meanwhile, my floppy drive was unusable.

I think this is because the process is blocked, waiting for the kernel
to complete some IO. I see the same thing under Solaris if I try to
ctrl-C out of tar. Cycling the power on the tape drive takes care of
it most of the time.

I have yet to find a way to get the kernel to 'reset' the device.

    Neil> How do I get these processes out of such a sleep? Or is the
    Neil> situation unrecoverable, something having gone badly awry in
    Neil> the kernel?

Its recoverable, the MS way :)

Andy
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