Hmm, as is too often the case, after sending an email seeking, I start to get some other clues--I found a suggestion to restart arts--I tried that, still no luck so I'm still looking for help (but maybe I have some kind of clue now).
Randy Kramer On Monday 21 June 2010 09:38:55 am Randy Kramer wrote: > Sorry this is so long--maybe I can summarize the problem here, then > you can go on and read the background and a more detailed explanation > of the problem: > > Sometimes after a program hangs (in this case noatun), I have trouble > restarting it without rebooting my entire system. I do look for all > the processes associated with the application (noatun, using ps -Al | > grep noatun) and kill them, with either kill -9 or kill -15, but > afterwards, when I try to start the application, I just get a > spinning hourglass indication in the taskbox (on the taskbar) and a > small bouncing blue ball elsewhere on the screen, both of which > eventually disappear without having started the application. > > Hmm, maybe with that you don't even need the Background and Problem > listed below. I've tried googling, but don't really have a good clue > for what to google. > > A dead end (I think): > > Oh, wait, I might have a clue: now I try to start noatun in a > terminal (with & or without) and I very quickly (sometimes) get exit > 255--hmm, on the next try I didn't get the exit 255--what does exit > 255 mean?: > > r...@s17:~$ noatun & > [2] 11248 > [1] Exit 255 noatun > r...@s17:~$ > > Well, I haven't found out what exit 255 means, but I don't think it > matters, it doesn't consistently happen, just sometimes. > > Background: > > This is surely not a Debian specific question, but I'll try asking > here to see if anyone can give me one or more hints--I've tried to do > some googling, but really don't have a good clue for what to google. > > I've had the same thing happen for applications besides Noatun (iirc) > (and on Linuxes that I used before installing Debian 5.0), but > because the current problem is Noatun, I'll mention Noatun in this > example. > > I was running Noatun and it hung. It may have been something I > did--specifically, at the time it hung, I had the playlist up and was > unchecking checkboxes on the playlist. > > In an effort to restart noatun, I looked (using ps -Al | grep noatun) > for all noatun processes and killed them with (the first time) > kill -9. Later (on subsequent attempts), I tried kill -15. > > Either one wipes out all the processes with noatun in the name. > > The problem: > > Here's the problem: when I go to restart noatun, it won't restart. > On the taskbar (is that the right name in KDE) I see a task labeled > noatun seemingly attempt to start--I see an hourglass spinning, and > elsewhere on my screen I see some sort of small bouncing blue ball, > but after 15 seconds or so, both disappear and noatun hasn't > restarted. If I go look at the processes using ps -Al | grep noatun, > I find something like the following: > > s17:~# ps -Al | grep noatun > 1 S 1000 11039 3039 0 80 0 - 8589 - ? 00:00:00 > noatun 1 S 1000 11040 11039 0 80 0 - 9670 - ? > 00:00:00 noatun 1 S 1000 11141 3039 0 80 0 - 8589 - ? > 00:00:00 noatun 1 Z 1000 11142 11141 0 80 0 - 0 - ? > 00:00:00 noatun <defunct> > s17:~# > > If I wipe those out (using kill -9 or kill -15), they disappear, but > when I try to noatun again I get the same result. > > In the past, the only way I found to recover from a situation like > this was to reboot. (Potentially just restarting KDE might also > solve the problem, but from my point of view, restarting KDE is as > drastic a solution as rebooting, so when I think about restarting KDE > I just go ahead and do a (cold) reboot with the hope of cleaning up > any other possible "garbage" that might be floating around in my > system.) > > I see that the one process is a Zombie. I've googled on things like > zombie, process, noatun, restart, and combinations thereof--even a > good suggestion on appropriate search terms might get me started here > (of course, a nice clear explanation and course of action would be > nicer). > > Thanks! > Randy Kramer -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
