How to kill process in state "D" uninterruptible sleep

[Sally Shears]

I have a process that shows in ps aux as state "D". I cannot kill it.

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 29755 0.0 1.7 8168 4484 ? D Sep29 0:00 tethereal

man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."

How can I kill this process?

kill -9 29755

..doesn't kill it.

-- Sally

[o***@yqxcte.com]

|I have a process that shows in ps aux as state "D". I cannot kill it.
|
|USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
|root 29755 0.0 1.7 8168 4484 ? D Sep29 0:00 tethereal
|
|man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."
|
|How can I kill this process?

Generally you can't, it's waiting for some I/O event, like a disk
operation completion. It's sometimes a symptom of bad hardware.
Sometimes you can provoke the hardware to abort, e.g. if writing to a
floppy, eject the floppy.
--

[Sally Shears]

Post by o***@yqxcte.com
|I have a process that shows in ps aux as state "D". I cannot kill it.
|
|USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
|root 29755 0.0 1.7 8168 4484 ? D Sep29 0:00 tethereal
|
|man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."
|
|How can I kill this process?
Generally you can't, it's waiting for some I/O event, like a disk
operation completion. It's sometimes a symptom of bad hardware.
Sometimes you can provoke the hardware to abort, e.g. if writing to a
floppy, eject the floppy.

I created this when I launched tethereal with no arguements...

What am I left to do? Reboot? Or is there any downside if I just leave
the process sleeping permanently?

-- Sally

[e***@htdfty.com]

|> |man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."
|> |
|> |How can I kill this process?
|>
|> Generally you can't, it's waiting for some I/O event, like a disk
|> operation completion. It's sometimes a symptom of bad hardware.
|> Sometimes you can provoke the hardware to abort, e.g. if writing to a
|> floppy, eject the floppy.
|
|I created this when I launched tethereal with no arguements...
|
|What am I left to do? Reboot? Or is there any downside if I just leave
|the process sleeping permanently?

I don't know why it's like that, I don't see anything special about
tethereal that would cause this. If you start another tethereal what
happens? Another process in D state? Are there any messages in the log
about disk errors?
--

[Roland Schulte-Osthoff]

Post by Sally Shears
What am I left to do? Reboot? Or is there any downside if I just
leave the process sleeping permanently?

These processes are also called zombies.

Look at this short explanation:
<http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/zombies.html>

For more Information try to google with "kill zombies"

HTH
Roland

[o***@ojpqkl.com]

|> What am I left to do? Reboot? Or is there any downside if I just
|> leave the process sleeping permanently?
|
|These processes are also called zombies.

Ahh...no. Zombies are denoted by Z in the ps output, not D as the OP
posted. Zombies are already dead, only not collected yet. Different
situation.
--

[Kevin & Theresa Miller]

Post by Sally Shears
I have a process that shows in ps aux as state "D". I cannot kill it.
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 29755 0.0 1.7 8168 4484 ? D Sep29 0:00 tethereal
man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."
How can I kill this process?
kill -9 29755
..doesn't kill it.
-- Sally

reboot?

[mjt]

Post by Sally Shears
man ps tells me that "D" is "uninterruptible sleep."
How can I kill this process?

... as a rule, you cant (even root). this process is waiting
for some i/o operation to complete. if there is faulty h/w
it is waiting on, then this process may never return

drop to runlevel 1 and see if it's still there; if not,
then return to your 'default' runlevel, which i suspect
is either 3 or 5
.