Gutsy 7.10 - A mind of it's own.

[Ted Hilts]

Rashkae wrote:
> 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
>
>   
Okay, I appreciate your warning about "kill -9 ..." but what should I 
have done to stop the "apt" process or any other process as far as that 
goes? There are many reasons why it may be necessary to stop a process.  
I obviously don't know the best way.  For just one example, when using 
FireFox web browser to capture web pages I have seen it hang Ubuntu 
because of some conflict with a media player that is not responding or 
does not exist.  Sometimes I have had to crash Ubuntu because of these 
sorts of things but most of the time I can use the command line in 
another desktop window to kill the FireFox web browser as the system 
quickly slows into a hung mode. However, I would appreciate some good 
advice on this subject of dealing with these kinds of problems.  There 
has to be a better way to break a hung system (non responsive) other 
than crashing that system.
I have tried to deal with such hangs by using another machine to 
remotely access the non responsive machine.  Connection is slow but 
eventually I can access the non responsive machine.  However, the 
commands I give the non responsive machine by this means are disregarded 
I think because the "sudo" command cannot be passed by this means.

Also, given what I said above what upgrades will occur if I use the 
command line

"sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get 
install ubuntustudio-desktop ubuntustudio-audio 
ubuntustudio-audio-plugins ubuntustudio-graphics ubuntustudio-video 
linux-rt" and will the servers and/or kernel be changed???

Thanks -- Ted