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... very sick PowerBook :-( How to kill a process that won't die?



Hello, all ... 

The "sudo" and "su" weirdness was a harbinger of doom it seems -- my PowerBook is now officially very sick.  Mail won't start (but it shows up in Force Quit, and if I Force Quit it, it locks the GUI solid i.e. frozen Dock).  Safari spins the beachball -- see Mail behavior above.  CPU usage is at 100%, and all of this is right after a restart.  Sometimes, starting the PostgreSQL postmaster via the Terminal brings up the faded display and the multilingual kernel panic message.

OK, this all started because I did a stupid thing -- my iPod's battery had run down, I had not the FireWire cable with me, but a coworker who also has an iPod (and a PC) lent me her iPod USB cable.  I plugged it in -- MISTAKE.  The iPod eventually mounted, but would not unmount.  iTunes started, but the GUI never displayed, and the box would not shut down because it kept saying "iTunes has cancelled logout, press Continue to force it to quit" (John presses Continue, to be greeted a few seconds later with "iTunes has cancelled logout, press Continue to force it to quit" ad nauseum ... ... ...) leaving no recourse but to hard-boot it (holding power down for n seconds).

I adore Apple, and I love OSX (this is 10.3.7), but this is terrible.  All I wanted to do was charge my iPod via the USB cable, but no ... I can use Terminal (which is where I live, anyway), but that seems to be all.  Since the-Mail-that-would-not-start seems to be using all of the CPU, I try:

jzorko@jzorkodt ~
$ ssh email@hidden
email@hidden's password:
Last login: Thu Jan 27 13:04:19 2005
Welcome to Darwin!
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  18.6  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   2:50.75 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0_

jmzorko    451   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:21PM   0:00.00 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ sudo kill -9 417
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  27.8  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   2:54.17 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0_

jmzorko    454   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:21PM   0:00.00 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  37.2  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   2:54.65 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0_

jmzorko    456   0.0  0.0    18172    336 std  S+    1:21PM   0:00.01 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  44.5  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   2:55.01 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0_

jmzorko    458   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:21PM   0:00.00 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$

... so Mail will not die (and it's using a lot of CPU).  I try the same with the beachball-spinning Safari:

mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ sudo kill -9 418
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Safari
jmzorko    418   0.0  0.0        0      0  ??   E    1:09PM   0:00.00 (Safari)
jmzorko    465   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:23PM   0:00.01 grep Safari
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Safari
jmzorko    418   0.0  0.0        0      0  ??   E    1:09PM   0:00.00 (Safari)
jmzorko    467   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:23PM   0:00.00 grep Safari
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Safari
jmzorko    418   0.0  0.0        0      0  ??   E    1:09PM   0:00.00 (Safari)
jmzorko    469   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:23PM   0:00.00 grep Safari
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Safari
jmzorko    418   0.0  0.0        0      0  ??   E    1:09PM   0:00.00 (Safari)
jmzorko    471   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:23PM   0:00.00 grep Safari
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$

... so at least it's _trying_ to die.  How's Mail doing?

mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  30.8  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   3:40.84 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0

jmzorko    473   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:24PM   0:00.01 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$ ps -aux|grep Mail
jmzorko    417  38.5  0.5   124572   3740  ??  R     1:09PM   3:41.57 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -psn_0

jmzorko    475   0.0  0.0    18644    100 std  R+    1:24PM   0:00.00 grep Mail
mranenlt:~ jmzorko$

... nope, Mail is still not willing to die (and it's _still_ hogging the CPU).

Can anyone tell me how to bring my PowerBook back?  How to kill Mail?  All of this from simply plugging my iPod (clickwheel) into the USB2 port ...

By the way, I am in San Francisco, so if anyone at Apple wants to see this first-hand, i'll gladly drive it down to Cupertino.  The state this thing is in, I can reproduce these problems without any trouble at all (sad face ensues).  If this is a bug and you can get some diagnostic info, I want to help.

Regards,

John

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