[ltp] Immortal process that does not let the computer to sleep.

[Javier (a.k.a AlBundy)]

On 12/25/05, Mike Kershaw <dragorn@kismetwireless.net> wrote:
> > Some days ago I tried to 'cat' a file in the /proc system, but it didn'=
t
> > work, the process hung and would not respond to a "kill -9".
> > [...]. So, at the end I had to reboot the computer to get rid of this
> > process.
>
> If the process is listed in 'ps' as state 'D' (and it sounds like it is,
> since kill -9 didn't make it die), then you can't do anything.  It's in
> uninterruptable IO sleep, forever.  You'll have to take an unclean
> shutdown to get rid of it, there is no way to kill it.

A "cleaner" shutdown may be done with sysrq:
http://linuxgazette.net/issue81/vikas.html

In extreme cases, you should follow this steps:
=B7Alt+SysRq+s
=B7Alt+SysRq+e
=B7(wait 1 or 2 minutes)
=B7Alt+SysRq+i
=B7Alt+SysRq+u
=B7(wait a bit here, too)
=B7Alt+SysRq+b