Gutsy 7.10 - A mind of it's own.

[Rashkae]

Ted Hilts - Thunderbird Acct. wrote:
> For several days now my Resource Usage Monitor has been busy even when 
> there is supposed to be nothing running.  So I did a "ps -A" and looked 
> for a process that might be the cause.  It turns out  that  my Gutsy 
> 7.10 was doing some kind of unattended upgrade -- the first time I have 
> ever seen this happen.  I checked the man files as well as the Ubuntu 
> Community Documentation and found "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get 
> install ubuntustudio-desktop ubuntustudio-audio 
> ubuntustudio-audio-plugins ubuntustudio-graphics ubuntustudio-video 
> linux-rt" but nothing about what set this process into motion in the 
> first place. In the effort of finding this situation I did "sudo kill -9 
> process-number" (where process-number represents the actual process 
> number). The process took a while to wind down which I thought was 
> strange.  By this time I was beginning to worry about the state in which 
> I had left the system.  For example, what happened after the kill 
> command? Can I resume the process?  What was upgrade actually doing;  
> apps. or apps plus kernel, just somethings or everything? If the process 
> was repeated either from where it left off or from the beginning what 
> happens to my system which pretty well runs 7-24 until it crashes or 
> goes weird.  Does it alert me in some way or what?
> 
> Thanks for any help or suggestions.
> 
> Thanks -- Ted
> 
> 

For future reference, never use -9 signal unless as a last resort.
Although I can't say what state killing an apt install process will
leave your system, it's certain that whatever safety net the process
might include to handle a Term signal will not take place if you force
the issue with -9