Re: D state
Billy Harvey (RhinoEngineering@thrillseeker.net)
Wed, 10 Feb 1999 19:46:35 -0500 (EST)
David Feuer writes:
> I was recently running fetchmail, mutt, and netscape at the same time, and
> found that two of them were in a persistent D state....
>
> I looked through /proc, tried ls /tmp, and the ls went into a D state. It
> seems at least two of them had open a *tremendous* file J<some
> numbers+such> in /tmp. After rebooting as gently as possible, I looked in
> the file (don't remember contents), and deleted it. Hasn't happened
> since.
>
> But I do wonder: What exactly is "D"? Shouldn't there be _some_ way to
> kill (SIGKILL) a process even if something is stuck? Whether standard
> behavior or not, I consider this a bug in Linux. If it is standard
> behavior, then it is a bug in the standard.
According to `man ps`, D state signfies "uninterruptible sleep". The
process is usually waiting for an I/O to complete, or thinks it is. I
think the recent problems with the kernel causing this was indeed a
bug. I forget the exact reason, but it was something to do with
memory management.
I haven't had this problem running linux-2.2.1-ac5. Does anyone know
the expected differences between 2.2.2 and 2.2.1-ac5? Alan's patch
has been very stable for me.
--
Billy Harvey
RhinoEngineering@thrillseeker.net
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