Kill spamd spawns new processes

[Pradeep <de...@ashoka.la.asu.edu>]

Hi,

Today I updated spamassassin from 2.63 to 3.01 on a linux machine. My 
init script does not work anymore because when I kill spamd it creates 
five new processes. So, I cannot start the daemon again.Any help is 
appreciated. Here is the info.

root@host:~# ps -ef|grep spam
root@host:~# spamd -d -x
root@host:~# ps -ef|grep spamd
root     13272     1 75 14:50 ?        00:00:03 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
root@host:~# kill -9 13272
root@host:~# ps -ef|grep spamd
root     13273     1  0 14:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
root     13274     1  0 14:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
root     13275     1  0 14:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
root     13276     1  0 14:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
root     13277     1  0 14:50 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
/usr/bin/spamd -d -x

Thanks.
Pradeep.

Re: Kill spamd spawns new processes

[Matt Kettler <mk...@evi-inc.com>]

At 06:57 PM 11/18/2004, Rick Macdougall wrote:
>Pssh, kill -15 is for wimps.... :)

Yeah, true.. real sysadmins just fix their servers by throwing the main 
circuit breaker in the breaker panel :)

(and of course, REAL sysamdins don't use UPS systems either. After all, 
what user is going to be at his computer accessing the servers by the dim 
glow of the emergency lighting???)

:)

Re: Kill spamd spawns new processes

[Rick Macdougall <ri...@nougen.com>]

Matt Kettler wrote:
> At 06:05 PM 11/18/2004, Justin Mason wrote:
> 
>> > Kill -9 is NOT a good thing to use for general shutdown of 
>> processes, it's
>> > really only one step better than having to pull the power plug on 
>> the box.
>>
>> yep -- in fact, it's pretty much equivalent to pulling the power
>> plug on that process.  kill -15 is a lot safer.
> 
> 
> Agreed.. Which is why it's only one step better than pulling the plug on 
> the whole box :)
> 
> I also found this useful website which goes quite in-depth on the matter:

Pssh, kill -15 is for wimps.... :)

Regards,

Rick

Re: Kill spamd spawns new processes

[Matt Kettler <mk...@evi-inc.com>]

At 06:05 PM 11/18/2004, Justin Mason wrote:
> > Kill -9 is NOT a good thing to use for general shutdown of processes, it's
> > really only one step better than having to pull the power plug on the box.
>
>yep -- in fact, it's pretty much equivalent to pulling the power
>plug on that process.  kill -15 is a lot safer.

Agreed.. Which is why it's only one step better than pulling the plug on 
the whole box :)

I also found this useful website which goes quite in-depth on the matter:

         http://www.speculation.org/garrick/kill-9.html 

Re: Kill spamd spawns new processes

[Matt Kettler <mk...@evi-inc.com>]

At 05:04 PM 11/18/2004, Pradeep wrote:
>Today I updated spamassassin from 2.63 to 3.01 on a linux machine. My init 
>script does not work anymore because when I kill spamd it creates five new 
>processes. So, I cannot start the daemon again.Any help is appreciated. 
>Here is the info.
>
>root@host:~# ps -ef|grep spam
>root@host:~# spamd -d -x
>root@host:~# ps -ef|grep spamd
>root     13272     1 75 14:50 ?        00:00:03 /usr/bin/perl5.8.0 -T -w 
>/usr/bin/spamd -d -x
>root@host:~# kill -9 13272

have you tried being nice and sending a normal kill (SIGTERM) instead of a 
-9 (SIGKILL)?

kill -9 does not allow spamd any opportunity to clean up after itself. The 
OS just force-unloads the process by dropping it from the process list and 
marking all memory free and files closed. Any pending file io is left 
incomplete, and all children are left to their own devices. SA has no 
chance to notify it's children by using it's sigterm handler.  You could 
even corrupt your bayes DB by using kill -9 on spamd.

You should never kill -9 any process without doing a regular kill first, 
except as a truly drastic measure for a severely dangerous out-of-control 
process which is going to take your whole system down if you don't stop it.

Kill -9 is NOT a good thing to use for general shutdown of processes, it's 
really only one step better than having to pull the power plug on the box.