Filesystem lock?

[Celso Pinto]

Hi guys,

i'm sending this email to the devel list first because i'm guessing this
isn't a tipical user problem.

I'm running a hoary system with reiserfs. A few days ago, somehow when I
tried to execute ls on a directory the command simply stalled. 
I couldn't kill it with kill -9, lsof showed that in fact ls was running
on that directory.

I guessed it had to be one of those one-time only problems that tend to
disappear if you reboot so I rebooted the machine and indeed the problem
was gone.

Today, the exact same thing is happening again. Whatever the command I
execute in that particular directory, it just hangs in there.

I really want to know the root cause of the problem but I guess my lack
of deep knowledge of the system is becoming an issue so i'm pleading for
help. 

I know how to use strace and have some basic knowledge of gdb but I
honestly think that the problem is related either with the kernel or the
filesystem itself so if anyone cares to jump in and give me instructions
on how to try and figure out what's wrong i'll be deeply appreciated.

Regards,
Celso

PS: I'm leaving the system as-is so it'll be possible to attach a
debugger to the running process if it helps.

-- 
Celso Pinto <cpinto at yimports.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20050223/af93b065/attachment-0001.pgp