len@math.nwu.edu (Len Evens) (04/04/89)
For many months we have had the problem of a port attached to a modem entering a `zombie state' in which the process was described as exiting and could not be killed. Thanks to the genius (whose name I forgot to record) who suggested the use of the trace command in a previous article in Sun Spots, we now have a solution which works for us. 1. Use the command trace -p PID (where PID is the process ID of the hung port) followed by Ctrl-C. 2. Edit /etc/ttytab (under OS 4.0) to turn off the port and execute kill -HUP 1 3. Repeat step 2 but this time to turn on the port. The last two steps are necessary in order to convince init to start a new getty at the port. This is a bit complicated, but it beats rebooting which is the only other thing which we found to work. Again, many thanks to the (unfortunately) anonymous person who suggested using trace. Leonard Evens len@math.nwu.edu Department of Mathematics Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208 312-491-5537