Re: ls /dir commands freeze periodically

From: Randall Schulz (sinkhole_at_tarpit.net)
Date: 08/28/04 

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:58:27 GMT

John,

At Friday 27 August 2004 16:17 in alt.os.linux.suse John Mullen wrote:

> I have noticed that sometimes the ls and dir command freeze periodically
> for all users including root. Attempting to kill the pids derived with
> the command ps -ax |grep ls (or dir) does not appear fix the problem. So
> far the only solution I have found is to reboot. I am currently using
> SuSE 9.1 but have experienced the same problem with separate
> installations of 8.0, 8.1, 8,2 and 9.0.
>
> Does anyone know how to solve this problem when it occurs?
>
> Thanks
> JM

Get more information. First of all, discover the PID of the hung
processes. Use the "psp" command, e.g. Then run "ps -l hungProcPIDs" to
see what state those processes are in. In particular, look at the WCHAN
(the wait channel) and the PRI (wait priority). If the PRI is less than
0, the process will not be killable by any user-level action until the
process reenters a running state. Also, look at what those processes'
file descriptors are bound to with "ls
-lF /proc/hungProcessPID/fd" (separately for each PID).

For what it's worth, once or twice I've seen processes hang in hard disk
I/O, which is supposed to be transient (on the order of milliseconds) by
definition, and hence is associated with an uninterruptible wait.

As to rectifying the situation once it occurs (short of rebooting),
there's probably not much that can be done, since it probably reflects
hardware errors or a bug in some kernel code.

Randall Schulz

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