[nzlug] can not kill a process

[Rex Johnston]

anru chen wrote:

> i have a process that can not be killed even by use kill -9 pid.

They are call zombies.  Stuck waiting for the kernel in a system call.

> use top command. i have found that process use 99.9% cpu.

Bzzzt.  Zombies don't do this.  Try again (kill 21023, then kill -9 21023)
BTW, it's bad form for just rush into a "kill -9".  Try the official process
stop method first, then a simple "kill", then wait a bit, if it's still
there, only then let loose with a "kill -9".

> the process is sendmail, seem like the sendmail process is waiting for 
> someting.
> 
> how can i found out more information about that sendmail process?
> 
> below is an output of "ps axl | grep sendmail " command
> 5     0 21023     1  17   0     0    0 -      RW   ?        418:13 
> [sendmail]

The RW tells us that...
1) this isn't a 2.6 kernel on linux
2) it's still running, and interruptable (you'd see a D for a zombie)
3) it's paging

Try stopping sendmail normally, or looking in the log files.

Cheers, Rex