when a process cann't be terminated through kill/skill/pkill/killall...

Osirix · 07-10-2006, 05:56 AM

I have tried su root, then
kill -9
pkill -9
skill TERM
skill KILL
killall
all cann't terminate a rpm process...
How to handle this case, except rebooting the server?

The process state is always the same:

Code:

root     32422  0.0  0.1  17488  2852 ?        D    14:26   0:00 rpm -ivh abc.rpm

NOTE: there's a question mark above following "2852", does it mean something was going wrong?

And now I just cann't install any rpm packages. Are there any tricks to make the lock-break of rpm?

Code:

# rpm -qa
warning: waiting for shared lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot get shared lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
no packages

But I just cannot reboot the server right away, because many important tasks are running?

Does this matter with the NFS, NIS services?

my OS: SuSE 9.3

cdhgee · 07-11-2006, 03:43 AM

The question mark probably means it's a zombie process (the process itself has died but its parent process is still running. You'll either have to find and terminate the parent process or wait for the parent process to exit.

As for the second question, this could be due to two reasons. Either you already have something in the system using the files in question (e.g. another rpm installation), or you don't have root privileges. These two give pretty much the same error message.

Osirix · 07-11-2006, 05:14 AM

Well, I have su root before installing the rpm package.

And please see the state of this rpm process. It is in D state, which means this process is waiting in uninterruptible disk sleep, thus make it could not be killed in a normal way...

So I wish to find some kernel class process manager? (maybe somehow like a rootkit...)

What's your suggestion?

cdhgee · 07-11-2006, 05:17 AM

I'm afraid this is beyond my knowledge.

noranthon · 07-11-2006, 06:18 AM

I found this on the rpm site: http://www.rpm.org/hintskinks/repairdb/

Osirix · 07-15-2006, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by noranthon

I found this on the rpm site: http://www.rpm.org/hintskinks/repairdb/

It said that the "lock" of rpm database could be fixed by:
rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*

Well, there aren't any "__db*" files under /var/lib/rpm/ directory in SuSE...so the webpage above may mainly talked about Red Hat Linux

So I just don't know how to unlock the rpm database in my SuSE 9.3.....

noranthon · 07-15-2006, 11:50 PM

I currently have two such files at that location in Mandriva, __db.001 and __db.002, both dated today, although I have not used any rpm command today.

They must be elsewhere on your system. I found searching for files in SuSE quite complicated. This is the advice I recorded from a SuSE user:

Quote:

Finding files in SUSE is not that complicated. Sure, using 'find' is not very convenient. But if you install findutils-locate, you get a nice tool for quickly finding files on your system (the first run of updatedb takes some time, but after that, it's a matter of split-seconds). To find executables, I use 'which <command>'. Then there is the rpm query command, e.g. 'rpm -ql kdeutils3-extra | grep bin' and the tool 'pin' to search the archive of your installation medium. These are all very quick and handy tools. The way I found kjots was to use the search function of YaST.

Surely there is a file finder tool?

The command nl /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit | grep rpm returned 854 rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db* &> /dev/null

rickh · 07-16-2006, 12:24 AM

You could also try "kill -9 pid" on your sleeping process

Osirix · 07-18-2006, 09:51 PM

Thank you!

Matir · 07-18-2006, 11:16 PM

By the way, a process with state 'D' cannot be killed (it's in uninterruptible sleep). When a process is hung this way, I'm not aware of any way to get rid of it short of a reboot.