Re: unconfiguring swap at shutdown

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:04:24 -0700
Jason Thorpe <thorpej%shagadelic.org@localhost> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 1, 2008, at 10:37 PM, Daniel Carosone wrote:
> 
> > The trouble is the unkillable buggers, blocking on some resource
> > that will never become available again,  that have gobbled all
> > memory and are the reason for needing the rebbot in the first place.
> 
> It's the kernel talking.  There is no such think as an unkillable  
> process!  There's no reason the kernel can't learn how to awaken a  
> blocked process for the purpose of committing suicide.
> 
Well, it hasn't happened yet, and it's been a problem for >30 years...

In principle, you're right; in practice, it's all just signal delivery,
sometimes to processes that appear to be blocked waiting for something
important.  We'd need a different mechanism to terminate processes with
very extreme prejudice.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb