On Jan 1, 2006, at 9:10 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> If, in the root window that's running pppd, I do ^Z and 'kill -9  
> <pid>',
> nothing happens.  Not good, but not a big surprise; we've all seen
> drivers that wedge in the kernel.
>
> If, however, I do the 'kill -9' from a second window, it works.  That
> suggests some problem about killing a stopped process, especially if
> it's slightly stuck on something todo with a device driver.

When you do the SIGTSTP and then the SIGKILL, do a ps -axwl and see  
what wchan the process is stuck in.  What happens if you type 'fg'  
after you SIGKILL?