[TriLUG] killing a process when 'kill -9' doesn't?

[Geoff Purdy]

> Is the process a zombie (defunct)?  If so, you will probably need to 
> kill it's parent.  You may find a command like
> %ps -A -o pid,user,cmd --forest
> to be helpful in tracing the lineage.


Thanks for the tip.  Unfortunately, I had already bailed
and rebooted the system.  I'll make a note to try that
next time.  Interestingly, when the process turned "zombie"
it threw an error in /var/log/messages.  Looks kernel
related, perhaps that's why it couldn't be killed?

May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:123!
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: invalid operand: 0000
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: smbfs autofs eepro100 usb-ohci usbcore ext3 jbd aic7xxx megaraid sd_mod scsi_m
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: CPU:    0
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: EIP:    0010:[<c01396f3>]    Not tainted
May 24 04:34:41 myserver kernel: EFLAGS: 00010286