when does kill -9 pid not work?

[Dave Turner]

In article <9748 at alice.UUCP> debra at alice.UUCP () writes:
>kill -9 pid (executed as the owner of the process or as root) is
>guaranteed to work.
>
According to ps(1) in my URM SVR2.1.0 for the 3B20,
if the Flag contains a 10 the process "cannot be awakened by signal".

>when the process exits (due to the kill -9) it may get stuck in a device
>driver or something, so it enters a "zombie" state. This means that the
>process is busy exiting, but hasn't quite gone far enough to tell init that
>it's really gone.

There are times when a process cannot be killed and does not enter the
zombie state. It will not use cpu time and will live (in a coma) until
the system is rebooted. I have seen this on other systems besides 3B20s.


-- 
Dave Turner	415/542-1299	{att,bellcore,sun,ames,decwrl}!pacbell!dmt