Changes
grep D was to broad of a query, you only care about field 10 containing D
First big '''S''' stands for Sleeping, '''R''' stands for running ("+" means that the process is foreground and small "s" means that the process is session leader, but it is not relevant for this article).
'''D''' state occurs then the process is in uninterruptible disk sleep. This state is bad, because you can't do anything with the process in D state. Fortunately, process normally remains in such state not for so long. But if you have a heap of D state processes then some logic in system is disrupt. If that is happening, the very important thing is to determine where this unlucky sleep occurs. It is easy to do with ps command with ''l'' option. WCHAN column shows the name of the kernel function where the process is sleeping:
<pre>
# ps axl | grep awk '$10 ~ /D/'
F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND
vass 13478 7.2 0.0 1732 624 pts/1 D+ 17:36 0:00 find ./
{{Note|In case you have problem with the D state processes, always attach this information to the report you send to developers.}}
==See also==
[http://wiki.preshweb.co.uk/doku.php?id=linux:psflags] describes the various states.
[[Category: Troubleshooting]]
Process waiting for its turn on CPU is in R state.