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

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 02:10:00AM +1300, Keith Chew wrote:
> 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.

How is this related to MPlayer development? This belongs on -users.
Anyway if the "kill" command itself hangs for a long time there is
some bug/bad code in your kernel (unfortunately there are more than a few)
or your hardware is broken.
And no, do not reply to this list, take it to -users if you need further
discussion.