digging down into a linux process

So I inadvertantly exited out of my Fedora X server without saving or exiting my VMware Player's open virtual machine:

This left my vm in an unknown state. You could still see the lock files in the Virtual Machine's directory:
[sodo@ogre ~]$ ll Virtual\ Machines/Windows\ 7\ x64/
total 10976188
drwxrwxr-x 3 sodo 4096 2011-01-07 12:53 caches
-rw-r--r-- 1 sodo 320659 2011-01-18 14:41 vmware-0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 sodo 359599 2011-01-18 14:14 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 sodo 565465 2011-01-08 00:14 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 sodo 317488 2011-01-18 17:33 vmware.log
-rw-rw---- 1 sodo 8684 2011-01-18 14:42 Windows 7 x64.nvram
-rw------- 1 sodo 2103836672 2011-01-18 17:35 Windows 7 x64-s001.vmdk
-rw------- 1 sodo 2121203712 2011-01-18 17:35 Windows 7 x64-s002.vmdk
-rw------- 1 sodo 2145255424 2011-01-18 17:35 Windows 7 x64-s003.vmdk
-rw------- 1 sodo 2145976320 2011-01-18 14:49 Windows 7 x64-s004.vmdk
-rw------- 1 sodo 955 2011-01-18 14:41 Windows 7 x64.vmdk
drwxrwxrwx 2 sodo 4096 2011-01-18 14:41 Windows 7 x64.vmdk.lck
-rw-rw---- 1 sodo 1073741824 2011-01-08 00:14 Windows 7 x64.vmem
-rw-rw---- 1 sodo 0 2011-01-07 12:37 Windows 7 x64.vmsd
-rw-rw---- 1 sodo 182610705 2011-01-18 10:18 Windows 7 x64.vmss
-rwxrwxr-x 1 sodo 2477 2011-01-18 14:42 Windows 7 x64.vmx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sodo 1645 2011-01-07 12:53 Windows 7 x64.vmxf
drwxrwxrwx 2 sodo 4096 2011-01-18 14:41 Windows 7 x64.vmx.lck

But after some Googling, there seemed to be no way to restart the orphaned vm without killing the process that was hanging out there. Before I killed the vm process, I researched it to find out more about it. First, I did a search on the process:
[sodo@ogre ~]$ ps -ef | grep vmx
sodo 4629 1 13 10:18 ? 00:31:48 /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -ssnapshot.numRollingTiers=0 -sRemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled=FALSE -s vmx.stdio.keep=TRUE -# product=8;name=VMware Player;version=3.1.3;buildnumber=324285;licensename=VMware Player;licenseversion=6.0; -@ pipe=/tmp/vmware-sodo/vmxb90ce351150180d7;readyEvent=90 /home/sodo/Virtual Machines/Windows 7 x64/Windows 7 x64.vmx

I saw that the process number was 4629. The command that started the process was vmware-vmx:
[sodo@ogre ~]$ ps -p 4629
PID TTY TIME CMD
4629 ? 00:31:48 vmware-vmx

Digging into the process directory, I saw the status of the process was sleeping:
[sodo@ogre ~]$ cat /proc/4629/task/4629/status
Name: vmware-vmx
State: S (sleeping)
Tgid: 4629
Pid: 4629
PPid: 1
TracerPid: 0
Uid: 500 500 0 500
Gid: 500 500 500 500
Utrace: 0
FDSize: 256
Groups: 500
VmPeak: 3281396 kB
VmSize: 3131036 kB
VmLck: 0 kB
VmHWM: 1409588 kB
VmRSS: 1343972 kB
VmData: 2727812 kB
VmStk: 288 kB
VmExe: 6784 kB
VmLib: 134888 kB
VmPTE: 3212 kB
Threads: 1
SigQ: 0/80092
SigPnd: 0000000000000000
ShdPnd: 0000000000000000
SigBlk: fffffffe7ffbfeff
SigIgn: 0000000000301000
SigCgt: 0000000193c9eeef
CapInh: 0000000000000000
CapPrm: ffffffffffffffff
CapEff: 0000000000000000
CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff
Cpus_allowed: ff
Cpus_allowed_list: 0-7
Mems_allowed: 00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000,00000001
Mems_allowed_list: 0
voluntary_ctxt_switches: 4744582
nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches: 7620

Alas, the vmware service offered no consolation..I could not shutdown the daemon gracefully:
[sodo@ogre ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart
Stopping VMware services:
VMware USB Arbitrator [ OK ]
At least one instance of VMware Player is still running.
Please stop all running instances of VMware Player first.

VMware Authentication Daemon [FAILED]

And so, good readers, I was forced to kill the process. And hard, as I had to add the -9 switch to kill, which effectively says "kill the process and don't do any cleanup". "Kill that sucker, but good!"

[sodo@ogre Windows 7 x64]$ kill 4629

[sodo@ogre Windows 7 x64]$ ps -ef | grep 4629

[sodo@ogre Windows 7 x64]$

Yes, this harsh kill command did the trick. And then I had to explain to my poor Win7 vm why I had pulled the plug so harshly:


Oh cruel fate, why dost thou mock me?
TAG

Reference
http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6killminus9.html

win7 rc1 and mac time machine fun

It had been a pretty fun-less summer round the Guy's house, with lots of work, a tough economy and aging parent problems. So, I finally said to myself, "Man, I haven't played a video game in a long time. Maybe I'll pick up Wolfenstein." This simple act led me down a very busy path the last couple weekends..

Aging Box Won't Cut It
My six year old Dell SC400 would not do the game justice, so I needed an alternative. Should I invest in a new core i7 box? Pricing one out on newegg with a ASRock board and an i7 920 chip came to almost $1000. I don't want to spend $1000 right now. But maybe I could install Vista 64-bit on the dual, quad core SC1430? Last time I tried installing a new OS on that box about a year ago, I learned that you can't install on IDE drives. So I needed a SATA drive. Luckily, I've since bought a couple of SATA drives and had a 500 gigger laying around. I also had a Vista 64-bit install disk, so it looks like I had all I needed to get started..

I could bore you with a lot of details about what has transpired over the last two weeks. Instead, I'll just bullet point the high points. Feel free to comment or ask where appropriate. Suffice it to say that the last two weekends have not been all that relaxing! :)

Last weekend
- installed Vista 64-bit and Wolfenstein. The OS ran fast on the dual, quad beast. Also, Wolfenstein's fun..just like the last one with better graphics.
- upgraded to Windows 7 RC1 (7057)
- Win7s performance went in the toilet, something must have been wrong. I blew it away and reinstalled Vista 64-bit
- backed up Vista to 500GB via Acronis (Seagate) Disk Wizard (six hours). Successfully test booted the backup.
- tried the Win 7 compatibility test. Just silly..it only looks at CPU/mem/video card specs. I was hoping it would look at your hardware and actually do a full compatability test that would tell you if the drivers for a specific card were available or not (listen up, Microsoft!). But that makes too much sense. Oh well.
- did Windows 7 RC1 (7147) full install/overwrite. Worked fine, as opposed to the upgrade, which did not.

This past week
- spent days this week trying to get Media Center working my tuner card.
- Analog cable works over NTSC
- ATSC with an antenna doesn't work, though it did in Vista Media Center. Weird.

This weekend
Win 7 work
- I can't install Win7 on my SATA RAID cause I ran out of drive bays in the SC1430
- alternative would be to move the drive to an external DVD, thus freeing up a bay
- Win 7 suddenly stops working and blue screen of death with wimFsf.sys PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA error (not sure why)
- did all sorts of things to figure out what was happening (tried rebooting with DVD, removed PCI cards one by one, performed memtest)
- had to remove NVidia card and connect onboard video to get boot DVD to work and repair system
- repair actually worked and Win7 booted again
- not sure why this happened
- backed up Win7 RC1 to my old 120MB notebook drive via Acronis & tested the backup (took 20 hours)
- while removing and replacing cards, I accidentally cut the wire responsible for the intrusion detection switch.
- Thus, I had to head to Home Depot to get a wire stripper, strip the wire ends, thread them back together and wrap with electrical tape. Irritating.

I think I must have opened my SC1430 and rebooted over 50 times these past couple of weekends

Mac Work
- prepped Mac for second profile for girlfriend to use Mac for her iPod syncing
- reused the 500GB to do a Time Machine backup of Macbook
- Time Machine worked well. It completed the initial back up of 170GB in about four hours.
- created a user profile for her on the Mac
- pulled the files off her iPod Nano and network copied them to her new profile
- sync'd her iPod with the Mac
- my profile seems corrupt (permissions errors, can't do SW updates from it), so I used her profile to install the latest SW updates (10.5.8, new iTunes, etc)
- Mac OSX VNC still preventing me from logging out of my profiles. Had to disable sharing
- upgraded her iPod's firmware
- noticed my Macbook was full of crap, so I deleted 50GB worth of shat.
- redid the Time Machine backup
- noticed mcd on the mac was taking up 90% of the CPU (stopping Spotlight and unplugging the TM backup drive seemed to stop this)

Still to do
One last try this week: move box down near windows instead of up in loft.

Looking at the work I've done over the past couple weeks, a number of trends appear:
- got my systems' backed up (Mac/Win7)
- tried a new OS (Win7)
- built a sandbox on the Mac for my girlfriend to start using the Mac
- played a game for about two hours :)

Not bad for two weekends of struggle.
TAG