Killing a thread that wont die

Hey all

First of I'm a noob at Linux, and I'm not too sure if this is in the right place.

I'm helping a webmaster trying to remove a runaway thread (from mySQL).

We're having trouble with killing a thread from mySQL. The thread is a left over from a previous run of mysql. mysql has restarted it self but will not allow us to kill the old thread (without rebooting, to which we dont want).

We've tried kill (w/ -9), skill (w/ trying to kill user, thread and command), mysql_zap, mysqladmin shutdown, re-install (fails with the error "error: failed dependencies: MySQL conflicts with mysql-3.23.54a-3.72 ").

All I've been alble to do is drop the priotity to +20 using snice.

Need help, any thing to help stop it and in the future will be of great help

Nephi

()

Is this the only mySQL process running and was it spawned by another like safe_mysqld?

No after a bit mySQL restarted (not too sure if from cPanel or from it self (cause we noticed it stops and starts by itself - is that normal??))