kill -9 doesn't work

[Sasha Pachev]

Some more thoughts on this. In theory ( I have never done it myself or heard of 
it being done), you should be able to kill a stuck process without rebooting if 
you write a kernel module that will modify the kernel structures cleverly enough 
to convince the kernel to permanently fail on that I/O. You would REALLY have to 
know what you are doing, though. Maybe Byron could comment on this tomorrow night...

-- 
Sasha Pachev
AskSasha Linux Consulting
http://www.asksasha.com