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

Since you're in San Francisco, bring it to the SF Apple Store on Market and let a Genius look at it. I don't think plugging in the iPod caused it; it was likely well on its way down the road to failure beforehand.

There's a number of potential culprits here, but only a hands-on examination is likely to find which one it is.

John

On Jan 27, 2005, at 4:33 PM, John Michael Zorko wrote:


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

Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
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 >... very sick PowerBook :-( How to kill a process that won't die? (From: John Michael Zorko <email@hidden>)



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