Edward asks:

> A few days ago we had a runaway process on our 3000 (a 979-100).
>  We ended up rebooting the system to get rid of the offending process.
>
>  While the process was running, we couldn't login to the system except with
>  "pri=bs".  Once logged in a "showjob" just sat there as did an "abortjob"
>  that I tried.  I tried to start glance but it just sat there too.
>
>  Any advise on the best way to handle the situation?  Its there any way to
>  find out what is running and kill the offending process?  (And why would
>  "showjob" hang?  Is it just waiting for CPU cycles or could it be unable
>  to access some internal system tables or something?)

All of your symptoms suggest that you had a process (although it may have
been something that you would consider a "subprocess") that was in an
infinite loop in the B queue. As a consequence, all processes normally given
less priority were starved of resources, thus you couldn't sign on and some
programs would not work unless you too got into the B queue, where you were
given somewhat equal footing.

Of course, all of this is merely a hypothesis, but your observations are
generally consistent with such a situation.

Wirt Atmar

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