killing processes

[Lonni J Friedman]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Machiel Richards
<MachielR at agilitytech.co.za> wrote:
> Hi all
>
>
>
>                 I hope someone can assist......
>
>
>
>                 We have a cron that runs regularly....however one of the
> child processes produced by the cron keeps on running even after the cron
> has completed...
>
>
>
>                 This uses up a lot of resources and we have not been able to
> kill it, not even by using kill -9.
>
>
>
>                 This is on a production system and we cannot afford to
> reboot the server.
>
>
>
>
>
>                 Can anybody perhaps tell us how to kill these type of
> processes?
>

You can't.  If kill -9 doesn't work, then the process is either a
zombie, or blocked on IO of some kind.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org