Please stop apps going into state D uninterrupted sleep !!

[Joe Zeff]

On 05/08/2012 04:17 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Depending on requirements, the programmer might be able
> to use aio(7) calls, but it complicates things greatly and AFAIK doesn't
> guarantee that the program will never wait.

If I read the man page correctly, a program can check the status of a 
call and, if appropriate cancel it.  Going into a loop to wait for 
results and canceling the request if it hasn't finished after whatever 
seems to be a reasonable time (Let's ignore, for the moment how that 
time's picked; it's important, but not yet.) abort the call and return 
failure.  I'm not sure how that could allow for an indefinite hang time, 
but I won't say it's impossible.  Now, the next question becomes if it's 
worth while doing, or if it's trying to fix a problem that never[1] 
comes up.

[1]Well, hardly ever.