Unable to kill runaway app. -

[Bob Goodwin]

Howard Wilkinson wrote:
> Bob Goodwin wrote:
>> I just had perhaps the third occurrence of this problem.
>>
>> I tried to shut down gthumb which was displaying a a photo from the 
>> nfs server. It would not shut down, at least not in a reasonable 
>> amount if time. Gkrellm showed cup1 running at max. and top indicated 
>> the cup at 99.5%. Something did eventually time out but that did not 
>> calm the cup activity.: .
>>
>>    3487 bobg      20   0  2928 1068  932 R 99.5  0.0 445:55.55 
>> gam_server
>>
>> Kill 3487 does not stop it. In fact nothing seems to. I told it to 
>> poweroff and it got as far as "halting system" and stayed there until 
>> I pressed the power button for five seconds or so.
>>
>> This happened once last night and it sat there saying it was busy, 
>> the power button was required to kill it then too.
>>
>> I don't expect anyone to troubleshoot the problem but would like to 
>> know what other commands I might try to restore things without 
>> shutting down and rebooting.
>>
>> This is an F-10 system pretty much up to date, certainly all security 
>> updates and perhaps all the rest, I've lost track at the moment. I 
>> suspect the problem is related to some horse photo files from my 
>> daughters Mac. But I need a way to stop things when this happens ...
>>
>> Any help appreciated.
>>
>> Bob
>>
> Bob,
>
> what kernel version do you have loaded, is the processor a multicore 
> or multiprocessor unit. If the kernel version is a recent FC10 update 
> and you are on an SMP motherboard then I have seen the same thing 
> happen with other processes. The problem seems to be in the area where 
> it interacts with the NFS code, BUT it look like a kernel problem with 
> the SMP system. I have not been able to get a dump to prove this but 
> try downgrading to an older kernel and see if it goes away - I used 
> the last FC9 kernel and it did.
>
> I have since upgraded to FC11 and this also does not exhibit the 
> problem so it may just have been with one or two of the latest FC10 
> builds!
>
> Howard.
>
This is an older computer, certainly not ancient, a Dell gx280 I bought 
used a few months ago.

[bobg at box9 ~]$ uname -a
Linux box9 2.6.27.29-170.2.79.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Fri Aug 14 21:11:41 EDT 
2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I believe that's the most recent Kernel from a few days ago, again I 
don't recall exactly when but I could try an earlier one, I usually save 
two older ones but never seem to need them.

dmidecode shows:

    Handle 0x0400, DMI type 4, 32 bytes
    Processor Information
            Socket Designation: Microprocessor
            Type: Central Processor
            Family: Pentium 4
            Manufacturer: Intel
            ID: 41 0F 00 00 FF FB EB BF
            Signature: Type 0, Family 15, Model 4, Stepping 1

    and also:

    Handle 0x0100, DMI type 1, 25 bytes
    System Information
            Manufacturer: Dell Inc.               
            Product Name: OptiPlex GX280              
            Version: Not Specified
            Serial Number: 9HY0281
            UUID: 44454C4C-4800-1059-8030-B9C04F323831
            Wake-up Type: APM Timer

    Handle 0x0200, DMI type 2, 8 bytes
    Base Board Information
            Manufacturer: Dell Inc.         
            Product Name: 0H7276
            Version:   
            Serial Number: ..CN1374056S00IZ.

    I guess that makes it a multicore processor.