Simulate an unkillable process in D state
From https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/disown_zombie_children_and_the
A process is put in an uninterruptible sleep (STAT D) when it needs to wait on something (typically I/O) and shouldn't be handling signals while waiting. This means you can't kill it, because all kill does is send it signals. This might happen in the real world if you unplug your NFS server while other machines have open network connections to it.
We can create our own uninterruptible processes of limited duration by taking advantage of the vfork system call. vfork is like fork, except the address space is not copied from the parent into the child, in anticipation of an exec which would just throw out the copied data. Conveniently for us, when you vfork the parent waits uninterruptibly (by way of wait_on_completion) on the child's exec or exit:
jesstess@aja:~$ cat uninterruptible.c
int main() {
vfork();
sleep(60);
return 0;
}
jesstess@aja:~$ gcc -o uninterruptible uninterruptible.c
jesstess@aja:~$ echo $$
13291
jesstess@aja:~$ ./uninterruptible
and in another shell:
jesstess@aja:~$ ps -o ppid,pid,stat,cmd $(pgrep -f uninterruptible)
13291 1972 D+ ./uninterruptible
1972 1973 S+ ./uninterruptible
We see the child (PID 1973, PPID 1972) in an interruptible sleep and the parent (PID 1972, PPID 13291 -- the shell) in an uninterruptible sleep while it waits for 60 seconds on the child.
One neat (mischievous?) thing about this script is that processes in an uninterruptible sleep contribute to the load average for a machine. So you could run this script 100 times to temporarily give a machine a load average elevated by 100, as reported by uptime.
Basically, you can't. Read this article, titled: TASK_KILLABLE: New process state in Linux.
excerptLinux® kernel 2.6.25 introduced a new process state for putting processes to sleep called TASK_KILLABLE, which offers an alternative to the efficient but potentially unkillable TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE and the easy-to-awaken but safer TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE.
This SO Q&A titled: What is an uninterruptable process? also explains it.
I discovered this in this very interesting book titled: The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook.
I had the same problem and resolved it by creating a kernel module that gets stuck in D state.
As I don't have any experience in modules, I took the code from this turorial with some modifications found someplace esle.
The result is a device on /dev/memory that gets stuck on read but can be waken up writting on it (it needs two writes, I don't know why but I don't care).
To use it just:
# make
# make mknod
# make install
# cat /dev/memory # this gets blocked
To unblock, from another terminal:
# echo -n a > /dev/memory
# echo -n a > /dev/memory
Makefile:
obj-m += memory.o
all:
make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) modules
clean:
make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) clean
install:
sudo insmod memory.ko
uninstall:
sudo rmmod memory
mknod:
sudo mknod /dev/memory c 60 0
sudo chmod 666 /dev/memory
Code for memory.c:
/* Necessary includes for device drivers */
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h> /* printk() */
#include <linux/slab.h> /* kmalloc() */
#include <linux/fs.h> /* everything... */
#include <linux/errno.h> /* error codes */
#include <linux/types.h> /* size_t */
#include <linux/proc_fs.h>
#include <linux/fcntl.h> /* O_ACCMODE */
#include <asm/uaccess.h> /* copy_from/to_user */
#include <linux/sched.h>
MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");
/* Declaration of memory.c functions */
int memory_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
int memory_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
ssize_t memory_read(struct file *filp, char *buf, size_t count, loff_t *f_pos);
ssize_t memory_write(struct file *filp, char *buf, size_t count, loff_t *f_pos);
void memory_exit(void);
int memory_init(void);
/* Structure that declares the usual file */
/* access functions */
ssize_t memory_write( struct file *filp, char *buf, size_t count, loff_t *f_pos);
ssize_t memory_read(struct file *filp, char *buf, size_t count, loff_t *f_pos);
int memory_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
int memory_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
struct file_operations memory_fops = {
.read = memory_read,
.write = memory_write,
.open = memory_open,
.release = memory_release
};
/* Declaration of the init and exit functions */
module_init(memory_init);
module_exit(memory_exit);
/* Global variables of the driver */
/* Major number */
int memory_major = 60;
/* Buffer to store data */
char *memory_buffer;
int memory_init(void) {
int result;
/* Registering device */
result = register_chrdev(memory_major, "memory", &memory_fops);
if (result < 0) {
printk(
"<1>memory: cannot obtain major number %d\n", memory_major);
return result;
}
/* Allocating memory for the buffer */
memory_buffer = kmalloc(1, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!memory_buffer) {
result = -ENOMEM;
goto fail;
}
memset(memory_buffer, 0, 1);
printk("<1>Inserting memory module\n");
return 0;
fail:
memory_exit();
return result;
}
void memory_exit(void) {
/* Freeing the major number */
unregister_chrdev(memory_major, "memory");
/* Freeing buffer memory */
if (memory_buffer) {
kfree(memory_buffer);
}
printk("<1>Removing memory module\n");
}
int memory_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp) {
/* Success */
return 0;
}
int memory_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp) {
/* Success */
return 0;
}
static DECLARE_WAIT_QUEUE_HEAD(wq);
static volatile int flag = 0;
ssize_t memory_read(struct file *filp, char *buf,
size_t count, loff_t *f_pos) {
printk("<1>going to sleep\n");
flag = 0;
//wait_event_interruptible(wq, flag != 0);
wait_event(wq, flag != 0);
printk("<1>Reading from memory module\n");
/* Transfering data to user space */
copy_to_user(buf,memory_buffer,1);
/* Changing reading position as best suits */
if (*f_pos == 0) {
*f_pos+=1;
return 1;
} else {
return 0;
}
}
ssize_t memory_write( struct file *filp, char *buf,
size_t count, loff_t *f_pos) {
char *tmp;
printk("<1>wake someone up\n");
flag = 1;
//wake_up_interruptible(&wq);
wake_up(&wq);
printk("<1>Writting to memory module\n");
tmp=buf+count-1;
copy_from_user(memory_buffer,tmp,1);
return 1;
}