shutdown

[Cheshire Chuqui]

In article <592 at denelcor.UUCP> lmc at denelcor.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney) writes:
>Several time now we have attempted to use shutdown to bring our 750 running
>4.2 dow. This normally works as expected, but sometimes the shutdown just
>seems to disappear.
>
>but we never hear from it again. When we bring the system down with
>/etc/halt, it finds that "some processes won't die". There is one
>zombie in the ps listing...

I've seen this on a 4.2 780 as well. It seems to be caused by shutdown 
attempting to output to a tty port that is hung, wedging the process
on an I/O wait. I haven't figured out why this happens-- it could be that
someone has left a terminal in a ^S state and the buffer fills up on 
shutdown and it waits forever for the terminal. perhaps a timeout in the
wall code will help, I haven't bothered to try to fix it.

chuq
-- 
>From the Department of Bistromatics:                   Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui  nsc!chuqui at decwrl.ARPA

  This plane is equipped with 4 emergency exits, at the front and back of
  the plane and two above the wings. Please note that the plane will be
  travelling at an average altitude of 31,000 feet, so any use of these
  exits in an emergency situation will most likely be futile.