[aclug-L] Re: Typical computer stuff

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Curtis Hawthorne wrote:
> 
> I can probably answer a few of your questions...
> 
> > 3.  When I get the error message about
> > /root/.netscape/lock, what can I do
> > to reset things back to normal?  Delete that file?
> 
> The reason for this is because there is still a copy
> of Netscape running in the background somewhere after
> you forceably destroyed it.  When you right click on a
> window, it trys to get rid of the proccess, but
> sometimes if it a particularly stubborn program it
> still won't quit.  The remedy for this is to pull up a
> terminal and type "ps -A"  find the first instance of
> Netscape Comminicator and type "kill -9 1234" (where
> 1234 is the process number).  The -9 sends it a a
> SIGKILL, which will get rid of any proces.  Then you
> can run Netscape again.

The other likely cause of a dangling Netscape lock file is
that the a previous incarnation of Netscape died without
cleaning up the lock file. This is usually a bug in
Netscape (e.g., an illegal memory reference), but it
could also have been a kill -9. The reason for this is
that SIGKILL cannot be caught by the process you're
sending it to. Most programs which keep lock files
arrange to catch signals, so they get a chance to clean
up before the program exits. However, it's nice to have
one little-used signal left that cannot be caught, just
in case the program's signal catching code is botched.

If you have a lock file and the process still exists,
kill -1 (SIGHUP) or kill -15 (SIGTERM) are better choices.
Only resort to kill -9 when no other remedy works.

BTW, if you do a ls -l on ~/.netscape/lock, you will find
that it is a symbolic link to something with a name like
192.9.201.65:733 -- i.e., your IP address, ":", and the
process id of your netscape-commun process. You can then
run ps -p PID, using the process id from the symbolic
link, to determine whether the process that owns the lock
file exists. If it doesn't exist, just rm the lock file.

-- 
/*
 * Tom Hull -- mailto:thull@xxxxxxxxxxx or thull@xxxxxxxxxx
 *             http://www.ocston.org/~thull/
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