Please stop apps going into state D uninterrupted sleep !!

[Alan Cox]

> If you run another instance of cp over the VPN when one is copy is in
> state D, the cp appears to run OK but you can nolonger do a ps -aux the
> terminal hangs on ps 

Let me make sure I understand this right. You've got

[FedoraBox]-----[VPNhw]----- // ----------[VPNhw][Otherbox]

and you are doing a cp across them with a VPN in place. Given cp isn't
network aware I assume you have a network file system mount of some kind
between the two boxes ?

If so you want to mount the NFS mount with the "soft" option, which tells
it that failing and timing out is ok.

More efficient in general might be to use rsync and scp instead, but
that depends on the application. Certainly for local/remote synching and
backup rsync/scp is more efficient.

Alan