ubuntu jaunty seized up

[Rashkae]

prad wrote:
>
> i've encounter a zombie before - i couldn't kill the defunct process
> even with a -9. i followed the idea of killing the parent process:
> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/killing-zombie-process.html
> 
> thank you carl, smoot and rashkae for these great explanations - and for
> the demo program smoot!
> 

Thanks for that link... seems all this time I was under a great
misunderstanding of what a Zombie process was.

I've encountered processes before that could not be terminated, even
with -9, because the kernel was stuck processing some impossible or
broken io operation for that process.  I used to think those were
zombies.....