Re: Sure-fire "kill"

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_exxesolutions.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:57:19 -0700
Message-ID: <3F16E37F.67D766D5_at_exxesolutions.com>


Mark D Powell wrote:

> Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_exxesolutions.com> wrote in message news:<3F160621.9F171420_at_exxesolutions.com>...
> > Joel Garry wrote:
> >
> >
> > I have yet to see kill -9 not kill a process.
> >
> > Looking at v_$session is not a reliable indication of whether a session has been killed.
>
> Daniel, From experience I can confirm that there are circumstances
> where UNIX kill -9 commands will in fact fail. But that is a UNIX
> issue that is not caused by Oracle though I think the issue can affect
> Oracle. We have experienced the problem on both the Pyramid and
> Sequent platforms. But I believe it is secondary and think the
> information you posted will solve the problem most of the time.
>
> Also from a logical point of view it would seem to me that v$session
> should be a reliable indicator of a session being killed. The status
> should reflect the current state of the session or the session entry
> should be removed. Logically for the view to reflect any other state
> would indicate a failure in Oracle's design logic or code.
>
> -- Mark D Powell --

What I meant by my statement was that there is a period of time during which a killed session remains in v_$session
while Oracle cleans up the mess. The fact that an entry remains behind does not mean that the kill did not do what it
was intended to accomplish. I should have chosen my words more carefully.

--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/extinfo/certprog/oad/oad_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
Received on Thu Jul 17 2003 - 19:57:19 CEST

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