wget can't be killed with 'kill -9'
I’ve started downloading large file (~30GB) on RedHat Linux using wget via SSH. Then I decided to interrupt it, so I pressed Ctrl+C. But suddenly it hanged. So I just closed the SSH connection. When I relogged into the system, I’ve found that this wget process isn’t dead:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
14834 me 20 0 0 0 0 R 100.0 0.0 22:36.96 wget
So I’ve tried to execute kill -9 14834, but it didn’t help, despite the process has R status. As far as I understand it’s normal status for the process to be killed: it’s neither zombie, nor uninterruptable. But why it can’t be killed then?
P.S. As an another symptom I noticed that I can’t ls or du the folder, where the downloading was initiated: listing hangs and I have to restart the SSH session. Can it be related to the problem above?
An unkillable process in state R is either a kernel bug or a hardware fault.
This shouldn’t happen, so there is no “legitimate” way to stop it. kill -9 is as hard as it gets. To find a reliable way of stopping it, you’d need to figure out what the bug is (if it’s a software bug) or how the fault affected the system (if it’s a hardware fault).
The most fragile part in a PC is the RAM, so do run a memory test. And make sure that your kernel is up-to-date with the latest available bug fixes.