Hi all,
I have a problem on my AlphaServer 1000 system, running DUNIX 3.2d-1,
with unkillable ntalkd processes. The command
ps -A -j | grep ntalkd
shows that I currently have 83 of these running on my system.
Here is a sample of the output:
USER PID PPID PGID SESS JOBC S TTY TIME COMMAND
root 1799 1 1010 1010 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 2164 1 1771 1771 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 2924 1 930 930 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 10473 1 1319 1319 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 12871 1 992 992 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 18209 1 1307 1307 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 20459 1 234 234 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 25710 1 948 948 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 31092 1 1000 1000 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
root 32007 1 753 753 0 U ?? 0:00.00 ntalkd
All 83 share parent process id #1 (init), which implies that they were
orphaned by their original parent, inetd (#448 in my case). Other ps
options that show start date show that these ntalkd processes have been
started at various times during the last 4 weeks. The system was last
rebooted about 8 weeks ago.
I have attempted to kill these from the root account with commands like
kill 20459
kill -9 20459
kill -15 20459
The kill command doesn't complain, but the process persists! Well,
checking the "ps" man page, I see that this is not surprising, because
the "U" state shared by all of these means "Uninterruptible sleeping
process". If I can't interrupt it, I can't send it a kill signal.
So, my problem is twofold:
1) How do I kill these "U" state processes?
2) How do I stop more of them from ending up in this state?
The second problem is the more worrisome. During the summer, I had
to reboot the system after it had been up for five months (a record
around here!) because it was out of process table slots. Checking
the crash dump, I saw hundreds of these ntalkd processes. Now
the problem appears to be coming back. I have temporarily turned
off the "talk" service in /etc/inetd.conf, but that is a crude
fix. My users would really like to have a functioning talk program.
Does anyone know of a known bug (and patch) in either the ntalkd
program or the kernel that causes these unkillable ntalkd daemon
processes to be left around?
Thanks for any ideas.
-Phil Farrell, Computer Systems Manager
Stanford University School of Earth Sciences
farrell_at_pangea.stanford.edu
Received on Thu Oct 30 1997 - 20:11:54 NZDT