killkp - Killing KPs

Introduction

The killkp utility is a command line tool to kill Knowbot Programs. It is rarely needed, but may be useful to kill runaway KPs when their reporting station is inaccessible.

Usage

The general form of the killkp command line is

killkp [-k kernel ] [-p password ] [-s signal ] kpid ...

Options

-k kernel

The kernel to which the KillKP() request is sent. (Default: your hostname, with the domain name stripped off.)

-p password

A password. Currently not needed.

-s signal

The UNIX signal with which the KP will be "killed". Default 14 (SIGTERM). (For experts only.)

kpid

One or more KP identifiers. The KP identifier for a given KP is printed by submit in verbose mode; it is also displayed by rs. If you are not using rs and you did not run submit in verbose mode, you can still get the KP id, albeit in a roundabout way. You first need to find the reporting id for the KP you want to kill. You can do this by listing the "kps" context of the kernel where the KP is running. (reporting identifiers can be arbitrary unique strings, but usually have the form digits-name.number, where digits is the UNIX process ID of the submit or rs tool that launched the KP, name is derived from the launched file name, and number is a serial number). Once you've found the reporting id, use the kpps tool to list status information about the KOS running the KP you want to kill. Look the reporting id up under the NAME field, and look across to the KPID field. This is the number you use for this argument.

Description

The KPs designated by the given KP identifiers are sent the given UNIX signal, presuming they are executing at designated kernel, and all permission checks clear.

What happens when a KP receives a UNIX signal depends on the signal (see the UNIX manual), but usually the KP is terminated without further ado. Neither the KP nor its supervisor gets a chance to clean up; the kernel does perform limited reporting and cleanup of the resources held by the KP.

Caveats

This tool and the Administrator.KillKP() interface are provisional, until a better interface for forced termination of KPs is devised.