Dear All,
Just one response to my query about hung xmh processes, from Ian Mortimer.
He suggests deleting files of the form /var/spool/mail/user.lock
A good suggestion, but not the answer in this case.
After I sent the message, I discovered that ps reported the hung processes
as waiting for lockctl, but this still doesn't tell me how to get rid of
them. Here is a ps display; it shows both some hung inc processes and some
defunct processes which are the results of killing hung inc processes with
a -9 signal.
$ ps -lfu alan
F S UID PID PPID %CPU PRI NI RSS WCHAN STARTED
TIME COMMAND
82808401 < 10020 718 1 0.0 0 -44 0K - -
0:00.00 <defunct>
82808001 S 10020 1363 1 0.0 44 0 72K lockctl Mar 30
0:43.60 inc +/home/staff/alan/Mail/inbox -width 100
82808001 S 10020 6688 1 0.0 44 0 272K lockctl Mar 30
0:41.82 inc +/home/staff/alan/Mail/inbox -width 100
80008001 S 10020 16820 22127 0.0 44 0 224K event Mar 30
0:07.25 xbiff -geometry 110x52+20-17
80008001 I 10020 20247 22127 0.0 44 0 280K event Mar 30
0:00.23 oclock -geometry -20+40
80008001 I 10020 22127 646 0.0 44 0 720K event Mar 30
0:01.72 mwm
82808401 < 10020 25798 1 0.0 0 -44 0K - -
0:00.00 <defunct>
82808001 S 10020 26834 1 0.0 44 0 272K lockctl Mar 30
0:42.94 inc +/home/staff/alan/Mail/inbox -width 100
80808001 I + 10020 32210 29010 0.0 44 0 48K tty Mar 30
0:00.10 bash
82808401 < 10020 32344 1 0.0 0 -44 0K - -
0:00.00 <defunct>
80808001 I + 10020 23163 702 0.0 44 0 160K tty Mar 30
0:00.12 bash
80808001 I + 10020 24532 22553 0.0 44 0 24K tty Mar 30
0:00.10 bash
80808001 I + 10020 29132 11396 0.0 44 0 176K tty Mar 30
0:00.11 bash
If this inspires anyone into sending a solution I'll send another summary.
Bob
Original message:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 14:23:11 +0100 (BST)
From: Bob Vickers <bobv_at_cs.rhul.ac.uk>
Reply-To: Bob Vickers <R.Vickers_at_cs.rhul.ac.uk>
To: Tru64 Unix Managers <tru64-unix-managers_at_ornl.gov>
Subject: xmh inc processes hung
Dear All,
Overnight we had a problem with inetd, and I think there were some DNS
timeouts which had various knock-on effects. Most things started working
again when I restarted inetd, but we have a couple of users who are
died-in-the-wool xmh users and xmh hangs as soon as it tries to
incorporate new mail. It creates 'inc' processes which cannot be
killed...if you use kill -9 they become defunct.
It looks to me like a locking problem. Does anyone know a way of
clearing whatever locks inc uses? The mail spool is on an NFS file system.
Bob
==============================================================
Bob Vickers R.Vickers_at_cs.rhul.ac.uk
Dept of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London
WWW:
http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/home/bobv
Phone: +44 1784 443691
Received on Mon Apr 02 2001 - 09:43:47 NZST