[5995] in Athena Bugs
unkilled processes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (vjames@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Sep 10 19:50:17 1990
From: vjames@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 19:49:50 EDT
Sept 10, 1990
Hello,
I sent you a message on Sept 7 detailing a problem with the
Athena system. I have now seen that this problem is on the VS200's as
well.
The problem is that some processes are not completely killed on logout.
These processes eat up a considerable amount of memory and CPU.
I logged into three different machines, and each one of them had
three or more of these ghost processes. (I did this tonight at 7:30 pm).
I will give a detailed description of one of these episodes, but I have
a feeling that you will be able to get a similar example by wandering into
any of the public clusters.
-------- EXAMPLE:
I typed a `ps' command and got the following:
>>>ps -aux |head
USER PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TT STAT TIME COMMAND
23570 45.7 3.0 887 139 v0 R N 1862:52 emacs -fn 8x13 -rv -title Word
779 45.2 3.3 885 145 p0 R N 14761:57 (emacs)
vjames 20933 33.8 4.7 155 127 p2 R 0:00 (ps)
vjames 20934 11.0 0.8 27 16 p2 S 0:00 (head)
root 20824 2.2 12.7 953 349 ? S 0:38 - -v :0 ttyv0 (Xqvss)
root 20893 0.9 3.6 532 130 v0 S 0:02 xterm -T second -geometry +0+0
vjames 20896 0.5 3.3 271 126 p2 S 0:07 (csh)
root 20862 0.2 3.4 549 125 v0 I 0:04 xterm -geometry 80x56+0+0
vjames 20860 0.2 4.0 550 104 v0 I 0:06 twm
I went in as a superuser and killed the two files with STAT == N. (the ones
with no names.
>>>su
Password:
W20-575-41# kill 23570
W20-575-41# kill 779
As I killed the last one, the following message displayed itself on the second
of my windows:
>>>whatnow: problems with edit--/mit/schen/Mail/draft preserved
% Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
As I pressed <ret> in the window that displayed the `reset' messages, I got
additional reset messages:
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
% Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
% Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
>>>
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
% Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
Reset tty pgrp from 20870 to 755
>>>Reset tty pgrp from 755 to 20870
This looks suspiciously like an infinite loop.
Thank you for your consideration.
James Violette (vjames@athena)
35-438
x3-4595
