On Sat, 14 Nov 2015 10:14:10 -0500
Gene Heskett <gheskett(a)shentel.net> wrote:
Greetings;
Twice in the last 2 weeks I have been forced to reboot the machine, as it
had a locked up, unkillable session of kmail showing in htop. I had hit
the list reply button, only to be greeted by the spinning dumbell mouse
cursor, which would spin forever. The machine was NOT stuck in a loop
someplace burning up cpu's, nothing, not even kmail was showing any
great cpu activity, but the process itself was unkillable.
This time I was attempting to teach Bret Busby how to construct a sig
separator, the \r-- \r sequence and it was one of his reply messages I
was reading & tried to reply to when it locked up.
This reboot took around 30 minutes because /amandatapes-1T, a terabyte
drive, had not been fsck'd in 181 days, and fscking a terabyte drive,
even if no errors other than severe fragmentation (62%) exist is a 30 to
45 minute process. Amanda, the backup program, /thinks/ the drive is a
30 tape, changer equiped library. (except its 10,0000% more dependable
that such a mechanical monster would be, and 2% of the cost) I'd hate to
think how long it will take to do a 2 terabyte drive as there is now 4
of them here at the Heskett mini-ranchette. Its difficult to buy
anything smaller.
I deleted the last 4 messages from him from ~/Mail/kubuntu-users/cur
before I restarted kmail, knowing I'd be going thru the same hung
machine procedure if I didn't. Last time I made 3 reboots trying, and
finally just cleaned out the folder (a different one) before trying a
4th reboot & kmail restart. That, like this, complained about the index
file being corrupted on the launch of kmail but normal operation was
able to be resumed.
Has anyone a clue just what gmail is doing now? Or how to fix kmail so
it tolerates a message posted from their (IMNSHO) busted webmail app?
This is R14.0.0.2 I believe. Last updated from Slavics? server a day
back.
Looks like I'll need to reboot again, I have a net caused ooops in the
log, and my local network is dead although I can ping yahell.
Thats weird. Generally speaking the process cannot become unkillable due
to error in a program itself, thats only happens if it stuck in the system
call. So i suspect problems with disk/fs or maybe a faulty network
card driver.
That makes sense. I'd do an HD check with the maker's tool CD.
Make sure to run a SMART check as, silent HD hang ups are often electronic
rather than mechanical.
If it's a desktop, swap out the nic.
Good luck
Kate