On Sat, 14 Nov 2015 10:14:10 -0500
Gene Heskett <gheskett@...> wrote:

> Greetings;
> 
> Twice in the last 2 weeks I have been forced to reboot the machine, as it 
> had a locked up, unkillable session of kmail showing in htop.  I had hit 
> the list reply button, only to be greeted by the spinning dumbell mouse 
> cursor, which would spin forever.  The machine was NOT stuck in a loop 
> someplace burning up cpu's, nothing, not even kmail was showing any 
> great cpu activity, but the process itself was unkillable.
> 
> This time I was attempting to teach Bret Busby how to construct a sig 
> separator, the \r-- \r sequence and it was one of his reply messages I 
> was reading & tried to reply to when it locked up.
> 
> This reboot took around 30 minutes because /amandatapes-1T, a terabyte 
> drive, had not been fsck'd in 181 days, and fscking a terabyte drive, 
> even if no errors other than severe fragmentation (62%) exist is a 30 to 
> 45 minute process.  Amanda, the backup program, /thinks/ the drive is a 
> 30 tape, changer equiped library. (except its 10,0000% more dependable 
> that such a mechanical monster would be, and 2% of the cost) I'd hate to 
> think how long it will take to do a 2 terabyte drive as there is now 4 
> of them here at the Heskett mini-ranchette. Its difficult to buy 
> anything smaller.
> 
> I deleted the last 4 messages from him from ~/Mail/kubuntu-users/cur 
> before I restarted kmail, knowing I'd be going thru the same hung 
> machine procedure if I didn't.  Last time I made 3 reboots trying, and 
> finally just cleaned out the folder (a  different one) before trying a 
> 4th reboot & kmail restart.  That, like this, complained about the index 
> file being corrupted on the launch of kmail but normal operation was 
> able to be resumed.
> 
> Has anyone a clue just what gmail is doing now?  Or how to fix kmail so 
> it tolerates a message posted from their (IMNSHO) busted webmail app?
> 
> This is R14.0.0.2 I believe.  Last updated from Slavics? server a day 
> back.
> Looks like I'll need to reboot again, I have a net caused ooops in the 
> log, and my local network is dead although I can ping yahell.
> 
> 

Thats weird. Generally speaking the process cannot become unkillable due
to error in a program itself, thats only happens if it stuck in the system
call. So i suspect problems with disk/fs or maybe a faulty network
card driver.

-- 
  Nick Koretsky (nick.koretsky@...)