Simple commands like w and ps end up blocking when they reach a readlink call on /proc/27887. Since its just one PID directory in /proc and not an entire mount point (eg: like when an NFS mount goes stale) I'm not really sure what would cause one file/directory block readlink. Anyone have any ideas?
[root@host 27887]# time strace ls -al execve("/bin/ls", ["ls", "-al"], [/* 24 vars */]) = 0 brk(0) = 0x1d3e000 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f37fb73a000 <...snip...> lgetxattr("exe", "security.selinux", 0xd48d60, 255) = -1 EOPNOTSUPP (Operation not supported) readlink("exe", ^C <unfinished ...> real 0m10.545s user 0m0.003s sys 0m0.005s [root@myhost ~]# strace ps -Aef execve("/bin/ps", ["ps", "-Aef"], [/* 24 vars */]) = 0 <...snip...> munmap(0x7f4be7222000, 4096) = 0 open("/proc/27887/cmdline", O_RDONLY) = 5 read(5, ^C <unfinished ...> real 0m4.256s user 0m0.012s sys 0m0.038s [link][12 comments]