[MPlayer-dev-eng] unclean kill -TERM <pid>?

[Keith Chew]

Hi

I have an application using mencoder to record CCTV video from a
camera. After every X minutes, I stop/start mencoder to start on the
next file (so each file keeps X minutes of video). To do the
stop/start, it is a simple:
- kill -TERM <mencoder-pid>
- mencoder <params>

This system runs 24x7, and today after running for weeks, I found the
kill -TERM took 12 hours to return.

I presume this is caused by an unclean shutdown of mencoder. To get
round the problem temporarily, I would like to know if it is safe to
call kill -9 <pid> instead. This is so that the application will not
hang, while I look into the problem further.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards
Keith