Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 16:34 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote: On 11/30/05, Travis Osterman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sometimes something about her setup goes haywire and she loses all her desktop icons and her wallpaper. I've had a similar issue and, for me, it's usually nautilus erroring. If I run '$ nautilus ' that usually fixes things (brings back wallpaper, icons, panels, etc).. Well, thats very similar to my approach, when i got problems with gnome (usually minor ones): $ killall nautilus If your gnome is setup correctly nautilus should be restarted afterwars atomatically - and hopefully work again. Matthias HTH -- Travis Thanks Travis. We'll keep that in mond for the next time this happens. Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Sometimes something about her setup goes haywire and she loses all her desktop icons and her wallpaper. I've had a similar issue and, for me, it's usually nautilus erroring. If I run '$ nautilus ' that usually fixes things (brings back wallpaper, icons, panels, etc).. HTH -- Travis -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
On 11/30/05, Travis Osterman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sometimes something about her setup goes haywire and she loses all her desktop icons and her wallpaper. I've had a similar issue and, for me, it's usually nautilus erroring. If I run '$ nautilus ' that usually fixes things (brings back wallpaper, icons, panels, etc).. HTH -- Travis Thanks Travis. We'll keep that in mond for the next time this happens. Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Hi, As far as I know, this happens, when a process waiting for a hardware resource. Maybe something happened, which blocks the hardware, that means, the kernel process never returns to the userspace. This can be caused by bad/buggy hardware or buggy driver. So, Richard is right, check your hardware, does everything work fine or not. Regards, István Richard Fish wrote: On 11/28/05, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name but none worked. To make forward progress I just rebooted. Is there some other way I could have tried killing this process? Nope. Usually this means something went terribly wrong in hardware. Pullling a hard drive out of the system while it is running is an easy way to duplicate this problem, as it will cause the kernel to enter an interminable reset loop to try and recover. Problems with network filesystems could also cause something similar. You should check dmesg output to see if the kernel is complaining about something. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
On 11/28/05, Richard Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name but none worked. To make forward progress I just rebooted. Is there some other way I could have tried killing this process? Nope. Usually this means something went terribly wrong in hardware. Pullling a hard drive out of the system while it is running is an easy way to duplicate this problem, as it will cause the kernel to enter an interminable reset loop to try and recover. Problems with network filesystems could also cause something similar. You should check dmesg output to see if the kernel is complaining about something. -Richard Very strange. 1) The process (gnome-vfs-daemon) was not defunct or zombie. 2) It only happens when my wife uses the system. If it's hardware related only she can trigger it. 3) There were absolutely no messages in /var/log/messages or dmesg. The way this gets triggered is a bit unclear. She's working along and then does something that causes he desktop, but not Gnome pannel, to disappear. The machine is still alive. She can run Firefox but she cannot lot out. To get out of X we do Alt-Ctrl-Backspace. We then go to the console and see that there are about 7 processes left owned by her avccount even though she is logged out. We have found that for her to log back in successfully we have to kill all of these processes. If processes cannot be killed then when she tries logging back in she gets no desktop again. This only happens with her account. We have deleted he home directory and rebuilt it twoce. Eventually the same thing occurs. I suspect it's a bug in Gnome, or Gnome pannel, triggered by all the strangle little setups she likes to do to it with drawers and transparent things. Possibly it's a video driver issue? Thanks, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Richard Fish wrote: Pullling a hard drive out of the system while it is running is an easy way to duplicate this problem, as it will cause the kernel to enter an interminable reset loop to try and recover OT I do not claim that what you said is not true, but once in the past, when I was young and dumb (now I'm old and dumb) I intentionally pulled out that 80-wire data-cable from one of my 2 ata-disks during heavy i/o-loading (copying files) just to see, if my raid-1 array (hda+hdc) survives it... Computer got crazy for ~20 seconds, spilled out a couple of screens with errors, but then resumed normal opperation and even finished copying files without any hard-lock. Just marked that one disk as failed and went on. Maybe it was just a luck... But I think new s-ata (or scsi) drives support some sort of hot-plug, so even disconnecting should not lock the whole system... /OT Jarry -- Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko! Satte Provisionen für GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
On 11/29/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OT I do not claim that what you said is not true, but once in the past, when I was young and dumb (now I'm old and dumb) I intentionally pulled out that 80-wire data-cable from one of my 2 ata-disks during heavy i/o-loading (copying files) just to see, if my raid-1 array (hda+hdc) survives it... Ah yes, RAID setups make this a survivable scenario. Thanks. But I think new s-ata (or scsi) drives support some sort of hot-plug, so even disconnecting should not lock the whole system... I think this is only true if you don't have any filesystems mounted on the disk, or at least no files in use. I've seen problems that required a reboot when I accidentally shutoff a USB disk that was in use. So it's not really the whole system that locks up, just anything trying to access that disk. Of course, if we are talking about the one and only system disk, well, the whole system locks up. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Do you and your wife have separate logons and if so, does this only happen when she is logged into her account using Gnome? In the past I've seen problems on my sisters' computer that sound similiar to what you've described and I've blown way the files that are created with Gnome is setup (this is on a box running Mandrake 9.2) the next time one of them logs in the files get recreated and this usually resolves the issue, and in times when it didn't work (because I just didn't seem to be hitting the nail on the head), I backed up their stuff (docs and so forth) created a new login for them, put their stuff into their new home and let them use it and if the problem went away, I'd just let them use this new login, or blow away their home dir and recover it with the copy. While it's certainly not elegant, it usually resolves their issues pretty quickly. Hope this helps, Shawn On 11/29/05, Michael Crute [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/28/05, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi,My wife ran into a problem this evening that required I do a reboot. She runs Gnome. Sometimes something about her setup goes haywire and she loses all her desktop icons and her wallpaper. In the past I've found that if we log her out and then in the console kill all processes left running with her account as the owner that she can then log back in and use Gnome correctly.This evening one of these processes was unkillable. I tried kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name but none worked. To make forward progress I just rebooted.Is there some other way I could have tried killing this process? Thanks, MarkThe times this has happened to my I used htop to send a SIGSEGV to make the program think it segfaulted and that caused the program todie. Its probably a horribly sloppy hack but it has worked for me inthe past.-Mike--Michael E. Crute Software DeveloperSoftGroup Development CorporationLinux takes junk and turns it into something useful.Windows takes something useful and turns it into junk.-- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list-- Shawn Singh
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
kill -9 -1 should just kill all her processes, even the Xsession that she owns, and restart X. I would restart your manager (xdm, gdm) just to be sure. While you have your gnome locked, you could check what is running and if any process is defunct at console, so you would know wich app and/or gnome process caused the problem. I would bet in hardware issues like anyone before, but only if that happened to all accounts randomly (bad memory, processor overheated, faulty disk, etc), but as it only happens to her account, you must check software, and I bet (of course) Gnome. Try switching manager for her (KDE, Fluxbox, any) and see if it happens there too. -- Daniel da Veiga Computer Operator - RS - Brazil -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.1 GCM/IT/P/O d-? s:- a? C++$ UBLA++ P+ L++ E--- W+++$ N o+ K- w O M- V- PS PE Y PGP- t+ 5 X+++ R+* tv b+ DI+++ D+ G+ e h+ r+ y++ --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Mark Knecht wrote: kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name see if you can perform a top and find the process that is hung. if it has a state of D, then you can't kill it. It's waiting for some type of IO or for some hardware. This is typical of a hardware failure, buggy driver, and sometimes weird things just happen if your computer becomes too hot (not enough cooling). -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
Mark Knecht wrote: Possibly it's a video driver issue? I'd say this is probably the first place to start looking. Try using an open source X driver and see if the problem goes away. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Mark Knecht wrote: Hi, My wife ran into a problem this evening that required I do a reboot. She runs Gnome. Sometimes something about her setup goes haywire and she loses all her desktop icons and her wallpaper. In the past I've found that if we log her out and then in the console kill all processes left running with her account as the owner that she can then log back in and use Gnome correctly. This evening one of these processes was unkillable. I tried kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name but none worked. To make forward progress I just rebooted. Is there some other way I could have tried killing this process? Thanks, Mark Was it a defunct or zombie process? - -- gentux echo hfouvyAdpy/ofu | perl -pe 's/(.)/chr(ord($1)-1)/ge' gentux's gpg fingerprint == 34CE 2E97 40C7 EF6E EC40 9795 2D81 924A 6996 0993 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDi/FtLYGSSmmWCZMRAh8NAJ9KXTfe8++DNn6sdGDwJSElL8Q9ywCePcxo XP7NmLuc8FA30xS7AfLj6W4= =AssW -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] unkillable processes
On 11/28/05, Mark Knecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: kill -15 PID kill -9 PID killall -9 process_name but none worked. To make forward progress I just rebooted. Is there some other way I could have tried killing this process? Nope. Usually this means something went terribly wrong in hardware. Pullling a hard drive out of the system while it is running is an easy way to duplicate this problem, as it will cause the kernel to enter an interminable reset loop to try and recover. Problems with network filesystems could also cause something similar. You should check dmesg output to see if the kernel is complaining about something. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
