Very odd. There are no blocking operations in reading the status file in /proc.
The only thing I can think of is that you have something bound (snapfs?) in
/proc
and that you're hanging on a stale mount point.
Is the clock set properly on that machine?
Sape
> hello
>
> today i found 9grid plan9 under heavy load, stats reports load ~2000, syscall
> ~60000, context ~22000, i was trying to discover which proc has gone crazy,
> but i can't even complete a ps. I can do other operations, such as sending
> this email over drawterm, run stats, netstat, read the logs, etc. but i can't
> run ps, or any other /proc related tool, i can't kill/Kill/slay anything.
>
> I can ls /proc
>
> cpu% ls -l | wc -l
> 573
>
> something like
>
> cpu% for(i in `{ls}) {echo -n 'PID ' $i 'has status. . . '; cat $i/status |
> wc -c }
> [....]
> PID 1944693 has status. . . 176
> PID 1944698 has status. . . 176
> PID 1944699 has status. . . 176
> PID 1944700 has status. . . 176
> PID 1944707 has status. . .
>
> and here ends, i can't know which process is that nor kill it.
>
> I can ls it:
> cpu% ls -l /proc/1944707/
> --rw-rw---- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/args
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/ctl
> --r--r--r-- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/fd
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 108 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/fpregs
> --r--r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 76 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/kregs
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/mem
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/note
> --rw-rw-r-- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/noteid
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/notepg
> --r--r--r-- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/ns
> --r--r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/proc
> --r--r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/profile
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 76 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/regs
> --r--r--r-- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/segment
> --r--r--r-- p 0 offending_user bootes 176 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/status
> --rw-r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/text
> --r--r----- p 0 offending_user bootes 0 Dec 1 2008 /proc/1944707/wait
>
> i can't either chmod those files. (is that date normal? seems all /proc is
> with that date :?)
>
> any tip on how to solve this without rebooting?
>
> thanks!!
>
> gabi
