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Date:      Sat, 17 Oct 1998 08:55:39 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "Woodchuck"  <djv@bedford.net>
To:        data@dreamhaven.net (Bryce Newall)
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Dead/zombie'd users ??
Message-ID:  <199810171255.IAA10839@castor.chuck>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96.981015002636.19668y-100000@ds9.dreamhaven.org> from Bryce Newall at "Oct 15, 98 00:29:10 am"

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Bryce Newall wrote:
> Hi again,
> 
> Somehow, it seems that one of my users must've gotten disconnected, but my
> system isn't aware of it.  It's showing a 4-day idle time for him:
> 
> [145]root@voyager:/root # w tazq
> 12:27AM  up 45 days, 15:19, 6 users, load averages: 0.08, 0.05, 0.07
> USER     TTY FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
> tazq     p6  dial-104.perth.n Sat09PM 4days  (tcsh)
> tazq     p8  dial-104.perth.n Sat04PM 4days  (tcsh)
> 
> And when I try to kill processed owned by him on those tty's, with a kill
> -9, I don't get an error message, but the processes simply will not die.
> Two of his processes don't even seem to exist:
> 
> [149]root@voyager:/root # ps aux | grep tazq
> tazq     11534  0.0  0.0     0    0  p8- Z+   -          0:00.00  (pine4)
> tazq     21292  0.0  0.0     0    0  p6- Z+   -          0:00.00  (pine4)
> tazq     11532  0.0  0.6   552  728  p8- IEs+ -          0:00.00  (tcsh)
> tazq     21290  0.0  0.6   552  728  p6- IEs+ -          0:00.00  (tcsh)
> 
> So I try to kill 'em all...

ps -jax will show what the parent process is. Kill that. In this case,
though, it's highly likely that 11534's parent is 11532.
11532 is I_dle, trying_to_Exit, and is a s_ession leader, and (+)
is a foreground process. Why it won't exit is another story.
Hangs like this are usually due to some kind of device glitch,
like an nfs volume that went away.


> 
> [150]root@voyager:/root # kill -9 11534 21292 11532 21290
> 11534: No such process
> 21292: No such process
> 
> Two error messages, two not, but all 4 still exist...
> 
> [151]root@voyager:/root # ps aux | grep tazq
> tazq     11534  0.0  0.0     0    0  p8- Z+   -          0:00.00  (pine4)
> tazq     21292  0.0  0.0     0    0  p6- Z+   -          0:00.00  (pine4)
> tazq     11532  0.0  0.6   552  728  p8- IEs+ -          0:00.00  (tcsh)
> tazq     21290  0.0  0.6   552  728  p6- IEs+ -          0:00.00  (tcsh)
> 
> Any suggestions on how to get rid of these ghosties?

Rebooting is a sure cure :-(   But they are fairly harmless, unless the
number of zombies gets large.

I would look "upstream", to the tcsh's parent process, trace back to
init, and see if it's more obvious what the trouble is. (Man ps
to interpret IEs+)

Dave
-- 
           Strangers know my loved ones' phone numbers!!!!

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