Why doesn't kill work?

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 20:38 -0700, James McKenzie wrote:
> Jesus M. Rodriguez wrote:
> > Try kill -9 <pid>  sometimes kill doesn't work.  When in doubt -9 it :)
> > Works everytime.  CTRL+Z simply puts it into the background.
> 
> I try in order:
> 
> kill <pid>
> kill -2 <pid>
> kill -15 <pid>
> kill -9 <pid>
> 
> However this would not kill a DEFUNCT process.  Anyone got an idea on 
> how to do this?

AFAIK a defunct (zombied) process cannot be killed.  It can only be
removed from the process table by rebooting.

> -- 
> James McKenzie
> With assistance, Now running 2.6.11rc3, Software Suspend 2
> and ibm-acpi .1
> Need a home for my .rpm
>